by 
This week we’re going back to school… kind of. Let’s start with our stories. On this week’s Brief we cover a Brown University professor finding students using AI to cheat, Anthropic giving free Claude access to teachers, and OpenAI embedding Kalshi betting data into ChatGPT.
School is hard. Can you remember a teacher, class, or even a project that was just impossible to get through? Think about it for a second. For me, it was my high school AP Calculus class. It took me so long to grasp derivatives. I would eventually understand the 1st derivative of velocity (rate of change of position), could fake my way through the 2nd derivative of acceleration (rate of change of velocity…barely tracking at this point), and was completely lost by the time we got to “jerk” (rate of change of acceleration?! Why are we accelerating at the 3rd step? Can we slow down?!). It was intellectually painful to get through that class. Sure, I have minor PTSD every time I see an indefinite integral, but I’m proud of myself for making it through.
If I had AI, I would have felt no pain. No struggle. No friction. I would have gotten 100%, and in doing so, would have learned absolutely nothing. There is an African proverb that states, “smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” The irony is that this massive tsunami of AI is actually calming the intellectual seas that growing minds need to navigate through. Free Claude for teachers! Gemini Enterprise for Universities! Take-home exams where you’ll be left to your own devices (literally). AI makes life easy. But I believe learning, work, even life…can benefit from being hard. I’ll end with a Tom Hanks quote from A League of Their Own. “It’s supposed to be hard. If it were easy, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.”