Servant of Christ, Summit Professor of Learning Technologies; Researcher on AI, CS, faith and technology, XR/VR/AR, gaming, simulations, health, online learning
worldwide
Joined October 2013
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"The man on the middle cross said I can come." youtube.com/watch?v=592BE5w8…
An updated Model Spec for more capable and beneficial AI (openai) openai.com/index/updated-mod… #edtech #ai
Rick Ferdig retweeted
This research gets at something missing from most debates about AI’s economic impact: coordination.
Organizations are more than the sum of their best performers, so smarter individual agents won’t transform the economy on their own. Agents that can coordinate together might do.
I joined @GoogleDeepMind to develop a research program on the economics of AGI. Today, together with Andrew Koh (@andrewjkoh) and Shane Legg (@ShaneLegg), we are incredibly excited to release The Economics of Intelligence, the first in a series of projects from our group on how AGI will change the economy.
How do capability improvements transform the economy, and when? In this project, we define thresholds of economic capabilities, e.g., minimal AGI, based on how they transform the economy. We then track how the economy–market structure, employment, and wages–changes during the transition across capability regimes.
We have seen exponential increases in what AI agents can do but the broader economy seems almost remarkably unchanged. Part of the reason is that the solo AI agent is the wrong economic object; economic transformation is an equilibrium outcome where organizations compete. Looking at how intelligence functions within organizations, transformation will depend on when two key capability thresholds are crossed: competence (gains on individual skills, e.g., coding, math) and coordination (gains on ability of agents to cooperate and work together).
We show that what economic transformation looks like depends on whether AI becomes supercompetent, supercooperative, or both—the regime of artificial superintelligence (ASI). Tracking this transition shows why the real visible transformation may come from improvements in coordination—a capability most benchmarks don’t yet track. Past a certain threshold, AI capabilities can break the Coasian ceiling on firm size and lead to an economy that looks drastically different than the one we see today.
Two main takeaways:
1. To understand the path of transformation, we should be tracking agentic coordination more closely.
2. The impact of AI will likely show up in wages before market structure or employment.
We are really excited about this paper. Excited to hear people’s thoughts.
Link: institute.deepmind.com/essay…
Rick Ferdig retweeted
I came across this timely study on AI and critical thinking. It finds people who are more confident in AI report putting less effort into critical thinking; whereas those who are more confident in themselves report the opposite. It seems we’re shifting some of our effort from++
Rick Ferdig retweeted
Claude gonna start snitching on Tuesday.
Anthropic just emailed customers. Starting Nov 3, text carries an invisible watermark.
You can't see it. It survives copy and paste, and it can survive some editing.
Only regulators, journalists, fact-checkers and researchers can check for it right now.
It doesn't say who you are. It says Claude touched the words. Even a quick proofread counts.
If your brand voice runs on Claude, write like someone might check. Because now someone can.
Science Policy Forum warns of the dangers of AI for democracy mpg.de/26044163/science-poli… #edtech #ai
Rick Ferdig retweeted
I was interviewed in Vox about my new book, and a question on the meaning of work let me discuss something I have been thinking a lot about, comparing the logic of industrialization to the logic of craft: "You’re a hand-weaver in a world of power looms." vox.com/technology/508032/ai…
The Machine Consumes Itself: Artificial Intelligence and the End of Publish-or-Perish link.springer.com/article/10… #edtech #ai
Rick Ferdig retweeted
I am speechless. Thomas Aquinas College just dropped a study on the rigor of the new SAT.
It compares the 1980/87 test with 2026. The findings should terrify every parent and teacher...
Vocabulary has collapsed.
Old SAT: 70.6% of questions tested vocab.
New SAT: 15%.
The old test forced students to know a wide range of words through analogies, antonyms, and sentence completions. The new test abandoned that. Most vocab questions now just ask students to fill in one blank from context.
Reading passages also got radically shorter (average ~97 words vs 300–340).
The new test uses short expository passages and hands you the necessary background knowledge inside the text. The older tests leaned much more heavily on argumentative and persuasive writing, assumed far more historical, scientific, and cultural knowledge, and penalized students who lacked it.
This is a redefinition of what "college readiness" means.
If you believe that kids should develop rigorous vocabulary, be capable of sustained reading, and possess background knowledge, I have bad news for you. The SAT no longer measures these.
If you want a future where children can actually read difficult texts and construct complex arguments, the SAT must be replaced now.
This cannot go on.
We were concerned that the SAT has become a less reliable measure of student preparedness for a rigorous college curriculum.
So, we commissioned a study from Johns Hopkins University. What does this study tell us about the state of higher education?
The results are shocking. thaq.co/4iLThZ0
Blockchain intelligence firms link North Korea to $6.3B hack on Binance npr.org/2026/10/30/g-s1-1509… #edtech #crypto
Man granted first-of-its-kind religious exemption against mandatory AI use at work — Humanist argues that offloading his thinking to LLMs violates his beliefs, Title VII accommodation protects employee tomshardware.com/tech-indust… #edtech #ai
Parents sue OpenAI, alleging GPT-4o coached their daughter off seizure medication techcrunch.com/2026/10/27/pa… via @techcrunch #edtech #ai #healthcare #healthcareai
Rick Ferdig retweeted
Academics have to invest tremendous effort into a single paper, so we often work on papers that we suspect will yield interesting & significant results. But that also pushes us to predictable work.
AI has no such constraints, forcing us to rethink a lot of how science is done.
Meta launches two new AI apps, including one aimed at kids socialmediatoday.com/news/me… via @socialmedia2day #edtech #ai #fashion #fashionai
Report Provides Unified Guidance for Advancing Wildfire Risk Modeling fsri.org/research-update/rep… #edtech #ai #firefighting
Microsoft Teams is getting a suite new AI features to crack down on phishing attacks itpro.com/security/phishing/… #edtech #ai #cybersecurity
'Aokigahara' Stealer Targets 'Developer Keyrings' & AI Assistants darkreading.com/endpoint-sec… #edtech #ai #cybersecurity
After only two years, Microsoft has removed Copilot from all smart TVs xda-developers.com/after-onl… #edtech #ai
Anthropic just launched tools to show companies what their AI spending is buying techcrunch.com/2026/10/28/an… via @techcrunch #edtech #ai
A new physics-informed AI tool aims to predict wildfire spread in real time and assist wildfire response phys.org/news/2026-10-physic… #edtech #ai #firefighting
