AGI - Advance, Grow, Innovate with AI

What if professors started grading the AI prompt instead of just the final paper? Mark Lowe, Program Chair for Entrepreneurship at Ivy Tech Community College in Lafayette, Indiana, is testing exactly that next semester. Jason Padgett sits down with Mark, a psychology professor and 10-year educator, to talk about what AI in college classrooms actually looks like when the goal is learning, not polic...

Claude Mythos dropped with warnings about breaking 50-year-old encryption and being too dangerous for public release. CitizenAI COO Oliver Belanger says it's something else entirely: one of the most well-targeted enterprise sales campaigns the AI industry has ever run. Key topics covered: Why AI companies use fear to drive consumer attention and investor funding The Anthropic vs. OpenAI busine...

AI makes students faster. The harder question is whether it's making them better thinkers, and Hunter Hickman, district AI implementation leader at Rensselaer Central Schools in Indiana, is one of the few educators actually building systems to answer that. Hunter is part of the Indiana Department of Education advisory group designing the state's first tiered AI certification for teachers....

Most AI projects fail before they start because businesses skip the most important step: figuring out what's actually broken. Jason Padgett and Adam Staples unpack why clarity has to come before automation, what the recent Claude code leak actually tells us about AI development culture, and whether the current wave of AI layoffs is real efficiency or EBITDA spin. Key topics covered: Why small...

AI teacher certification is getting built from scratch in Indiana — and the guy designing it explains exactly how. Ryan Murray, Project Specialist at the Central Indiana Educational Service Center, breaks down the SAIL certification program (Strategic AI Integration and Leadership), a three-tier framework built with educators, higher ed, and industry across the state. Key topics covered: Why rural...

OpenAI is shutting down Sora and pivoting its entire enterprise strategy to compete with Anthropic — and that's just one move in a week that also saw Apple replace Siri with Google Gemini, the federal government release its first AI safety framework, and Meta and YouTube lose jury trials over addictive algorithm lawsuits. Key topics covered: OpenAI kills Sora and exits adult AI companion featu...

What does AI literacy actually mean for K-12 students, and why are most school districts getting it wrong? Kristen Kayser, Senior Lead for the Midwest at aiEDU (AI Education Project), joins Jason Padgett to answer that question — and to explain why buying AI tools without a district-wide strategy creates more problems than it solves. Key topics covered: Why workforce leaders say AI literacy is a r...

OpenAI called an internal code red. Anthropic is winning enterprise. ChatGPT launched ads. And the question nobody in your company wants to answer: if AI is making employees twice as productive, where is that money going? Key topics covered: OpenAI vs. Anthropic enterprise race: what "code red" actually means and why Anthropic is pulling ahead ChatGPT free tier advertising: what the expe...

AGI Schools Out Saturdays | Season 2, Episode 10Amanda Wilkerson | Ivy Tech Community College SPOTIFY / APPLE PODCASTS DESCRIPTIONWhat does AI workforce training look like when you start by asking employers what they actually need? Amanda Wilkerson, Assistant Faculty Lead at Ivy Tech Community College, is finding out. In this episode of AGI Schools Out Saturdays, she and Jason Padgett dig into the...

Weekly Blitz | March 16, 2026 | Special Audible Edition Guests: Brian Beck + Colin Stauffer wo central Indiana consultants walk Jason through what AI adoption really looks like on the ground for SMBs. No theory. No pitch decks. Just what's working, what's blowing up, and what most businesses still refuse to deal with. 🔑 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗧𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘀:Colin's BLOP framework: start with boring, low-risk, a...

How should college students actually use AI to land a job in 2026 — when every applicant has the same tools and companies are using AI to screen the resumes that AI wrote? Purdue junior Umar Yasser (Business Analytics, ibex intern) joins Jason to dig into what campus conversations about AI really sound like right now, and what skills are going to matter when the tools are commoditized. Key topics...

Most businesses think they're ready for AI agents. Jason Padgett and Clay Cash — a 25-year data and litigation technology veteran — break down exactly why that's usually wrong, what it actually costs to fix it, and where the real opportunities are for companies that get their data house in order first. Key topics covered: Claude Code and what it unlocks for non-traditional developers who a...

Agentic AI just caused a Mac Mini shortage in New York City — and most people working at the Apple Store didn't even know why. This week, Jason Padgett and Julie Koehrer break down what agentic AI actually is, what OpenClaw set off, and how non-technical professionals can start building real AI skills before this moves even faster. Key topics covered: OpenClaw and agentic AI: what it does, why...

AGI Podcast Presents: The Weekly Blitz — Episode 8 Jason and CitizenAI COO Oliver Belanger break down how AI can actually help nonprofits connect people to the wraparound support they need — and then drop an announcement that changes what the Blitz sounds like going forward. Key topics covered: What "wraparound needs" are and why they're the leading cause of people dropping out of wo...

AGI - Advance, Grow, and Innovate with AI (Podcast) - Building the future, one human-AI collab at a time. Weekly Blitz Episode 7.  AI news recap for Feb 23, 2026: OpenClaw, Gemini 3, vibe coding, and the white collar job displacement conversation finally hitting mainstream news. Jason Padgett and Julie Koehrer cover two weeks of AI in 30 minutes after a brief hiatus. Key topics covered: OpenClaw a...

AI adoption keeps stalling in organizations for the same reason most conferences are forgettable: nobody designed for behavior change. Nick Bonora, Director of the Purdue University Event Design LAB℠, joins Jason Padgett to connect event design methodology to the real barriers behind AI integration at work and in life. Key topics covered: Why behavior change is the only real measure of a successfu...

THE VIBE EPISODE 3 What do Anthropic's internal AI papers reveal about the future of education, safety, and humanity? Ronda Swartz, Assistant Principal at St. Barnabas Catholic High School with 28 years in education, joins Jason to analyze Dario Amodei's vision documents and the concerning exodus of AI safety experts from major labs. Key topics covered:St. Barnabas Catholic High School&#39...

How does a middle school language arts teacher use AI to build better lessons, save time, and actually know her students better? Patty Oshier, a fifth-year educator currently teaching seventh and eighth grade at a charter school, shares exactly what's working in her classroom right now. Key topics covered:Using AI to create lesson materials that meet curriculum standards when textbooks fall sh...

How do you cut administrative work in half without laying anyone off? Phoenix Paramedic Solutions did it using Claude Teams and custom AI workflows. Jason and Julie break down real implementation: healthcare facility communication failures, AI time tracking that doesn't require spreadsheets, and why Claude corrects your priorities instead of telling you every idea is brilliant like ChatGPT doe...

Jordan Meyers on School's Out Saturdays on the AGI Podcast - Because our job is to prepare students for their future not our past. (Episode 6) ChatGPT in Paramedic School: How One EMT Stopped Reading Textbooks Episode Summary :Jordan Myers, EMT and paramedic student, replaced her textbooks with ChatGPT. She built a complete A&P study guide in 2 days (would've taken weeks manually), tra...

Julie's MIA, so Jason called in Harrison Painter (Launch Ready AI) to decode the internet's latest obsession: OpenClaw. The autonomous AI agent everyone's downloading without understanding the cybersecurity risks. Harrison spent 72 hours in the lobster hole and came back with warnings. 🔑 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗧𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘀:OpenClaw's security nightmare: autonomous agents with full computer access creating...

School's Out Saturdays on the AGI Podcast - Because our job is to prepare students for their future not our past. (Episode 5) Episode Summary: John von Seggern spent a decade learning that "personalized AI" in ed-tech is mostly marketing BS. When 80% of students never touch the AI features you built, you don't have an adoption problem - you have a product problem. Real personaliz...

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗹𝘆 𝗕𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘇 - 𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝟰 | AI Wearables Are Coming: Privacy, Productivity, and Who's Really Working Jason and Julie debate Google joining Siri, AI-powered glasses hitting the market, and Jason's experiment translating CEO directives into helpful check-ins instead of micromanagement. Claude Code joins the conversation. 🔑 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗧𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘀: Google joining Apple's Siri ecosystem signals AI...

School's Out Saturdays on the AGI Podcast - Because our job is to prepare students for their future not our past. (Episode 4) Episode Summary :Lena Morris brings boots-on-the-ground reality from corporate training floors: employers ARE hiring for AI skills, and schools that ignore this are setting students up to fail. We dig into why K-12 needs AI literacy now, how EQ separates humans from mac...

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗹𝘆 𝗕𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘇 - 𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝟯 | AI Health Tools, Data Centers, and the Great Midwest Migration ChatGPT Health and Claude Health just dropped, and Jason and Julie debate whether convenience will beat privacy concerns. Plus, data centers are coming to Indiana, and that means talent migration. Will the coasts lose their grip on tech workers when families can raise kids in the Midwest with lower costs...