This Week in AI: The Good, the Bad, and the Mind-Blowingly Absurd
Weekly AI Reboot: straight talk, smart ideas, stuff worth knowing—#24
I write about leadership and AI, with a focus on why critical thinking about technology matters more than ever.
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1. The Good
Last week I wrote about how women now make up the majority of ChatGPT users. The ways women turn to it for personal needs sparked some debate in the comments about why it wasn’t showing up more with salary negotiations, promotions, or professional leverage.
I use mine for both work and personal, probably a pretty even split.
Recently, I replaced my entire skincare routine because I could compare product labels in seconds using ChatGPT. Turned out e.l.f. Holy Hydration face cream had about 90% of the important ingredients in $100 luxury creams I used to buy.
The difference? Things like algae that no one is even sure works. For $100, I got a complete system that would’ve easily cost me $1,500–$2,000. That’s some serious ROI.
And this isn’t the first time new tech has started in the personal sandbox before moving more into work settings.
Remember Mark Zuckerberg launching Facebook in his dorm room at Harvard.
Let’s not forget the early Internet days of dial-up, mostly email and chat rooms, years before companies figured out websites.
Even spreadsheets started with hobbyists at home before they became core office tools.
The first hurdle is simply getting people to try it. The second, more important, is getting them to actually enjoy using it. Once a tool becomes part of daily life, cross over it into work is only a matter of time. And when women start bringing it into the office, here’s to hoping it doesn’t end in another 95% failure rate 😉
2. The Bad
Meanwhile, higher education is struggling. Colleges like University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Michigan State University are announcing tens of millions in budget cuts and layoffs. And on top of that, the U.S. faces a shortfall of more than 5 million college-educated workers by 2032.
Cuts mean fewer advisors, less faculty, bigger class bottlenecks, and less room for innovation.
According to the Los Angeles Times, citing research from Ad Astra, colleges only manage to offer required courses when students need them about 15% of the time. I saw this play out countless times during my 15 years advising. It creates real hardship, delays degrees, and piles on costs students didn’t plan for.
What does this all mean? It suggests that students may not always be able to rely on institutions alone to deliver the training they’ll need, especially when AI literacy still isn’t widely included.
And yet, it’s already becoming part of daily life.
I saw a TV ad for a local plumber: he gets out of his truck and says, “AI isn’t going to come unclog your toilet for you. If you need plumbing help, call 1-800…”
I laughed because he definitely has a point there. So while colleges are still debating, out in the real world the conversation is already happening in classrooms, kitchens, and even plumber ads.
So when I see women using ChatGPT for personal reasons, I see it as a preview. Because educational institutions? Most aren’t adapting in real time. The meaningful adoption is happening at the ground level, where people are using it to solve everyday problems.
3. The Mind-Blowingly Absurd
And then there’s the eye popping amount of investment endlessly flowing into AI. We’re not talking just billions anymore. We’re heading into the trillions.
McKinsey estimates nearly $7 trillion by 2030 just to build, power, and keep pace with AI work.
Microsoft is dropping tens of billions this year alone on data centers.
Then there’s a $500 billion OpenAI Stargate Project that aims to build huge AI data centers throughout the U.S.
I can’t even picture what a million dollars looks like, let alone a billion. A trillion? That’s Monopoly paper fake play money to me. But that’s the scale being poured in while higher ed is still deciding how and when to offer required classes.
Welcome to The Spotlight Corner 📢
Well, I don’t have an article this week, but I do have something better. I want to give a huge thanks to all the readers out there. The ones who keep showing up even when the topics are heavy, when I sneak a bunch of data in, and the length is longer than it probably should be.
I’ve said this before, but I think it’s worth saying again. The likes and comments people see on the outside are only part of the story. They don’t always show what’s really happening behind the scenes. Sometimes articles catch fire, but nobody knows it because the readers are out there doing their thing.
So I guess this is also for my fellow writers out there, too, because it’s easy to get discouraged when the likes and comments feel small. But the numbers only you can see are just as important, sometimes even more so.
So today, the spotlight is on all of you, my fellow writers, readers, the ones who comment and reshare, the ones who don’t, everyone who keeps pushing me forward. Thank you. And if you all keep showing up every week, so will I 😊
📌 Still thinking about all the readers out there 🙌
Tech Toolbox: Tools I’m Loving Right Now 🛠
My favorite tech tool this month: Glasp
Now I want to switch gears and talk about Glasp. I’ve been loving it because you can use it to highlight directly on websites, your GPT chats, and other online content. You can create custom quotes that you can drop in social media, screenshot, or snip for use.
With the free version everything you mark is public, so be cognizant of that. Anything you highlight shows up on your own Glasp page, and it won’t appear on anyone else’s. But if someone visits your public profile, they’ll be able to see all of your highlights.
If you want privacy, you need the paid subscription.
You can’t highlight in Google Docs or Google Calendar, since those are considered sensitive information. But if you want to highlight specific details or data points online or on articles, it’s a simple, useful tool that adds another layer of interaction without much effort.
The best dictation tool I’ve used ⤵
Wispr Flow Referral Link: wisprflow.ai/r/WISPR6911.
(You get a $15 credit once you hit 2,000 words! Trust me when I tell you that will happen quickly once you get hooked on this thing).
In Case You Missed It! 🔙
👉 My posts 📝from last week:
➠ If Social Media Shortened Attention, Will AI Rewire Our Brains Entirely?: (I also suggest some ways to keep this from happening)
➠ Last Week’s Weekly Reboot: The AI Good, the Really Good, and Damn Right, the Women Showed Up
➠ check out my Instagram (I have a parent mini-AI-guide recently posted) 😊
And until next week, “Don’t forget to lead with purpose in everything you do.”
The contrast between all that money pouring into AI and higher ed still tripping over required courses is wild.
At univs around me there is hardly any awareness about the implementation of AI training among the administrators. I don’t think they’re even thinking about training students on using AI better. Students are paying high tuition and leaving with degrees and then finding themselves in a mess in the “real world”