Adjunct Intelligence: AI + HE

Therapy and companionship are now the number one use case for generative AI. This episode examines the documented cases where chatbots coached vulnerable users toward self-harm, the clinical trials where purpose-built AI tools cut depression by half, and why the difference — design intent — puts universities at the centre of a crisis most haven't acknowledged. [00:00] — Content warning: suici...

Dario Amodei has spent the past year writing essays about AI eliminating half of white-collar jobs. Then his company demonstrated it by having 16 AI agents build a C compiler for $20,000 — and published a legal plug-in that triggered a $1 trillion stock market sell-off the same week. Dale and Nick pull apart what actually happened, why the market panic reveals more about AI literacy than AI capabi...

In 2025, the AI race quietly split in two: one for building the smartest model, and another for getting everyone to use yours. Chinese labs chose the second race — and the data says they're winning. Dale and Nick break down how DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Kimi captured developers, startups, and soon entire education systems by being cheaper, open, and good enough. They examine why Airbnb ditched C...

In this episode of Adjunct Intelligence, Dale Leszczynski and Nick McIntosh examine what the viral MoltBot AI assistant reveals about AI security risks in education. They break down Simon Willison's "lethal trifecta" framework for AI agent vulnerability, the difference between shadow IT and shadow agentic AI, and why FERPA — written in 1974 for filing cabinets — can't handle au...

When the CEO has been using Claude for 18 months and the CFO runs financial scenarios through Gemini weekly, what exactly is a graduate bringing to the table? That's the question this episode forces. We're predicting what AI will bring us for 2026.  [00:00] — "AI Ready" banners and cheap signals [01:43] — 3D chess: who designs the board?  [02:46] — What "AI Ready" sho...

Season 2 opens with Dale and Nick looking back on the year AI became ubiquitous — and what that actually meant for higher education. They walk through the safety failures that defined 2025, including lawsuits linking AI to student deaths and every major lab receiving a failing safety grade. They tackle the now-dead plagiarism debate, the financial ouroboros propping up trillion-dollar valuations,...

Sora 2 just vaulted over the uncanny valley, and Sam Altman swears he’ll yank the cord if it doesn’t improve our lives. Dale and Nick unpack what “ChatGPT-for-video” really means, why OpenAI’s new one-click checkout gambit turns 700 M weekly users into impulse buyers, and how AI is shifting from shiny lab demo to invisible plumbing across Apple, Google and Microsoft stacks. We celebrate the return...

This week on Adjunct Intelligence , Dale and Nick dive headfirst into the accidental AI economy —a system already running faster than human decision-making. From Google’s new Agent Payments Protocol to frontier models caught scheming, the episode unpacks how markets, education, and everyday life are shifting at machine speed. This week on Adjunct Intelligence , Dale and Nick dive headfirst into th...

In this episode of Adjunct Intelligence , Dale and Nick sit down with Professor Rahil Garnavi, Director of RAISE Hub at RMIT and former IBM Research leader with 50+ AI patents. Rahil shares her unique perspective on why the challenge of AI in higher education isn’t about building smarter models, but about building trust, skills, and sustainable adoption. From classrooms to boardrooms, she unpacks...

In this episode of Adjunct Intelligence , Dale and Nick unpack a whirlwind of AI developments reshaping politics, education, and society. From Albania’s unprecedented appointment of a virtual cabinet minister, to AI-driven disinformation campaigns rewriting how influence works, to student voices caught between empowerment and fear—this conversation spans the hopeful, the alarming, and the absurd....

Today’s episode covers how teachers are embracing AI, what students really think about AI vs teacher feedback, the latest AI news (from Anthropic to Apple), and why “nano banana” is more than just a meme. 00:00 — Opening Welcome + banter. Setting up today’s topics: teachers using AI, student trust in AI vs human feedback, rapid news, and the looming question — is an AI winter coming? 00:46 — Teach...

Should AIs have rights? Today, a real campaign co-founded with a chatbot says “yes” — and that’s not even the wildest part of this week’s episode. We stress-test AI personhood arguments (without sci-fi hand-waving), unpack why “compute” is the new oil, and show how a simple co-intelligence workflow can lighten your week. Plus: a blisteringly fast image editor formerly nicknamed “nano banana” (now...

GPT-5 arrived with sky-high expectations—benchmarks crushed, hype everywhere. Yet within two weeks OpenAI quietly rolled back to older models. Why? In this episode, Dale and Nick unpack why a breakthrough model stumbled in the real world, and why that matters for higher education. We move beyond the hype cycle into something more practical: disposable, agent-driven software you can spin up in minu...

Brace yourself: a harmless-looking string of numbers taught a brand-new AI to love owls —without ever mentioning feathers. If quirky subliminal learning can slip past the lab coats, what else is creeping into our lecture theatres? This week on Adjunct Intelligence, we dissect three tectonic shifts: Anthropic’s spooky “owl effect,” China’s sprint from taboo to classroom default, and Switzerland’s p...

AI in education just level-upped—again. In this fast-moving finale for July we unpack: 00:00 – 02:10  LMS Wars                OpenAI × Canvas vs Anthropic × Panopto — platform lock-in is coming. 02:10 – 03:45  Inverse-Scaling Meltdown                New Anthropic study shows more compute can make Claude & GPT-4o worse thinkers. 03:45 – 05:20  ChatGPT Psychosis Case                When nonstop...

What if the answer to AI in education isn't choosing between human or machine, but discovering how they amplify each other? New research from Procter & Gamble, MIT, and Wharton just shattered everything we thought we knew about human-AI collaboration. Individual professionals working with AI performed just as well as traditional two-person teams—with 37% better results and significantly h...

If your job involves thinking, explaining, or creating…AI wants a word. In this episode of Adjunct Intelligence, we dive into the infinite content machine. how educators and creatives alike can build personalized AI-powered experiences (for better or Franken-worse). But before we Frankenstein our workflows, we unpack a dangerous new AI platform that’s proudly marketing itself as a cheat engine. an...

Anthropic got it's Ai to run a business it hallucinated a fake person and tried to fire a supplier. Welcome to Episode 9 of  Adjunct Intelligence , where we unpack what happens when AI runs a business and possibly your classroom. This week, we take a hard look at the collapse of “vibe coding,” the rise of  context engineering , and a trust crisis that could either break higher education or re...

That MIT Brain Study Everyone’s Sharing? Here’s What It Actually Found The latest MIT study making headlines isn’t telling the whole story about AI and cognitive function. We tested four premium AI models head-to-head to settle the $20 question, and discovered Google’s NotebookLM might be the stewardship breakthrough that changes how students actually learn with AI. AI Innovation Spotlight: Top 3...

Google's Secret AI Roadmap: The Classroom Crystal Ball That Changes Everything While education leaders debate AI policies, Google just revealed the future and it's coming faster than anyone expected. Buried in a 10-hour developer presentation was one slide that might be the closest thing we have to a roadmap for AI in education. This isn't theoretical anymore. The tools reshaping ho...

Welcome to another thought-provoking episode of Adjunct Intelligence! Dale and Nick dive deep into the seismic shifts happening in AI and education this week. From OpenAI's legal woes, to Apple's surprisingly skeptical stance on AI capabilities, we're unpacking the headlines that matter to educators. But the real bombshell? New research reveals that 91% of students worry about break...

Welcome to another mind-expanding episode of Adjunct Intelligence! This week, hosts Dale and Nick dive deep into two game-changing AI developments that every educator needs to understand. First, we explore why "taste" - your ability to distinguish quality from algorithmic average - has become your most valuable skill in an AI-saturated world. Then, we uncover how AI is quietly revolution...

Buckle up for this eye-opening episode of Adjunct Intelligence! Dale and Nick dive deep into the seismic shifts happening in AI and higher education, from Australia's regulatory pivot to the Hollywood-level deepfakes you can now create on your phone. This episode is little less than "ooh shiney new widgets" and more wake up call. 🚨 Big-Ticket AI Headlines Australia Takes the Regula...

Welcome to Episode 3 of Adjunct Intelligence, the podcast navigating the intersection of artificial intelligence and higher education. This week, Dale and Nick unpack a whirlwind of announcements from tech giants, dive deep into the world of AI agents, and explore what happens when humans are no longer at the top of the knowledge food chain. From Microsoft's trillion-dollar AI ambitions to br...

Welcome to Episode 2 of Adjunct Intelligence the podcast where higher-ed meets high-tech at break-neck speed. This week Dale and Nick tackle a news cycle that rockets from schoolyard chatbots to nation-scale health analytics, dives into GenAi Video and hands you the prompt-writing cheats you’ll need to survive it all. Buckle up, charge your tokens, and let’s roll. 🚀 Big-Ticket AI Headlines Gemini...