How AI is depriving students of basic human skills
The debate over how to use AI in schools — and what constitutes cheating — may seem like a replay of previous debates that occurred when technology disrupted education. But AI feels different. Columnists Molly Roberts, Megan McArdle and Monica Hesse unpack AI's pernicious effects and discuss how we might bring about a better AI future.
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Forbes
16 minutes ago
- Forbes
4 Timing Secrets That Fueled Billion-Dollar Venture Growth
Time to Takeoff: Get It Right! getty Most unicorn founders weren't first — they just mastered timing. These timing secrets fueled unicorn growth by helping entrepreneurs spot the right emerging trends early, act before takeoff, and use that narrow window to build the right strategy and skills to lead the industry. That's how Sam Walton beat Kmart, Jeff Bezos won over Borders, and Mark Zuckerberg overtook MySpace — without needing early venture capital and often beating those who had more capital. Here are 4 key timing secrets of Founder-CEOs who achieved rapid growth and market dominance. Just like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Mistral, unicorns are best launched when the industry is just emerging. The key to building a unicorn is entering the right emerging trend — for you — at the right time. This is after the industry starts and before it takes off and this time period has ranged from about 3 to 11 years ( • After the start because major trends are started by external factors – not by an entrepreneur. These factors can include disruptive technologies, new laws, and economic changes. • Before takeoff because it is difficult even for existing giants to catch up, as is demonstrated by Sears, Wards and the countless other giants crushed by upstart billion-dollar entrepreneurs. Nearly every billion-dollar entrepreneur took advantage of an emerging trend, including: • Big-box stores: Sam Walton (Walmart) and Dick Schulze (Best Buy). • Personal computers: Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Michael Dell (Dell) • Linking PCs: Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner (Cisco) • Internet 1.0: Jeff Bezos ( and Page and Brin (Google) • Internet 2.0: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook/ Meta) • Internet 3.0: Travis Kalanick (Uber) and Brian Chesky (Airbnb). What can you do? Emerging trends often take 3 to 11 years to take off – but your window to enter is at the beginning, not after takeoff. The earlier you start, the more time you'll have to refine your strategy and build dominance. When you enter the trend is important. The winners are rarely first movers. They're usually first dominators. One of the key reasons why only about 11% of first movers led their industry ( is that first-to-market or even a product-market fit is often not enough. The winners are those who dominate, not those who rush. The ultimate winners are usually smart followers. In artificial intelligence, IBM was the first, but many other companies, including ChatGPT, seem to be leading. Examples of smart followers included Sam Walton in the big-box trend, Bill Gates in the personal computer trend, Steve Jobs in the iPod and iPhone trends, and Brian Chesky in the online trend ( Alex Karp noted that some in Europe are waiting for the right moment to get in on AI, and that they will rue their delay. His point – get in now or miss a major emerging trend. What can you do? If you are the first mover, keep pivoting to find the right strategy (see #3). If you are the smart mover, find the neglected segment that can be targeted by the emerging trend. Finding the right strategy is key because each emerging trend is different. Product-market fit gets you started. But domination requires the right combination of product, market, strategic group, sales driver, and unicorn-launch skills: • Walmart: Found his niche in rural locations by pivoting from small stores. • Gates: Found his edge with a strategic alliance with IBM by pivoting from writing programs. • Dell: Dominated by selling direct-to-consumer. • Bezos: Launched with books to dominate. • Chesky: Focused on helping landlords find guests and pivoted from guests. What can you do? Most unicorns didn't guess their way into dominance — they learned, pivoted, and refined until they found the dominant strategy. You may have to do so also. So be flexible to pivot and test to find the right strategy – this takes time. Unicorn-entrepreneurs rely on skills to grow from idea to unicorn. They do not rely on VCs or their hired CEOs. They learn both technical skills (or partner with someone who has them) and unicorn-launch skills. Gaston Taratuta didn't jump in blindly – he learned the skills to enter the emerging Internet trend by joining Universo Online in Brazil and then scaled Aleph into a billion-dollar company ( What can you do? Identify the unicorn-launch skills you lack. Then learn, test, and practice them before the trend takes off. ( MY TAKE: Timing isn't about being first. It's about being ready — with the right skills, strategy, and edge — before the trend takes off. Jump in when the trend begins, then use the runway to master your skills, evaluate your strategy, and position yourself to dominate when the trend takes off. Or better yet – be the leader who makes the trend take off. Learn how the top 125 billion-dollar entrepreneurs did it — often without VC. Read my other blogs on Forbes.
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death
Claude's blog is no more. A week after TechCrunch profiled Anthropic's experiment to task the company's Claude AI models with writing blog posts, Anthropic wound down the blog and redirected the address to its homepage. Sometime over the weekend, the Claude Explains blog disappeared — along with its initial few posts. A source familiar tells TechCrunch the blog was a "pilot" meant to help Anthropic's team combine customer requests for explainer-type "tips and tricks" content with marketing goals. Claude Explains, which had a dedicated page on Anthropic's website and was edited for accuracy by humans, was populated by posts on technical topics related to various Claude use cases (e.g. 'Simplify complex codebases with Claude'). The blog, which was intended to be a showcase of sorts for Claude's writing abilities, wasn't clear about how much of Claude's raw writing was making its way into each post. An Anthropic spokesperson previously told TechCrunch that the blog was overseen by "subject matter experts and editorial teams" who 'enhance[d]' Claude's drafts with 'insights, practical examples, and […] contextual knowledge.' The spokesperson also said Claude Explains would expand to topics ranging from creative writing to data analysis to business strategy. Apparently, those plans changed in pretty short order. "[Claude Explains is a] demonstration of how human expertise and AI capabilities can work together,' the spokesperson told TechCrunch earlier this month. "[The blog] is an early example of how teams can use AI to augment their work and provide greater value to their users. Rather than replacing human expertise, we're showing how AI can amplify what subject matter experts can accomplish." Claude Explains didn't get the rosiest reception on social media, in part due to the lack of transparency about which copy was AI-generated. Some users pointed out it looked a lot like an attempt to automate content marketing, an ad tactic that relies on generating content on popular topics to serve as a funnel for potential customers. More than 24 websites were linking to Claude Explains posts before Anthropic wound down the pilot, according to search engine optimization tool Ahrefs. That's not bad for a blog that was only live for around a month. Anthropic might've also grown wary of implying Claude performs better at writing tasks than is actually the case. Even the best AI today is prone to confidently making things up, which has led to embarrassing gaffes on the part of publishers that have publicly embraced the tech. For example, Bloomberg has had to correct dozens of AI-generated summaries of its articles, and G/O Media's error-riddled AI-written features — published against editors' wishes — attracted widespread ridicule.
Associated Press
20 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Nintendo's Switch 2 soups up the graphics, but does it deliver the games?
WASHINGTON (AP) — I'm cruising around Bowser's Castle with my old pal Toad. It's not exactly relaxing, what with all the lava pits and banana peels and turtle shells littering the road. Add 23 other characters — is that a cow driving? — who are trying to get to the finish line first, and it's chaos. The hectic, high-speed insanity of any race in the new Mario Kart World would have caused the eight-year-old Switch console to wheeze a bit. And that's why we've got the Switch 2 ($449.99), the souped-up sequel to Nintendo's popular home-and-portable hybrid. It looks prettier, too. The 7.9-inch portable display (up from 6.2 inches) boosts the resolution to 1020p (from 720p), and while the LCD screen isn't quite as sharp as an OLED screen might have been, it's much cleaner than the original recipe Switch. It looks even better when connected to an HDTV since it now supports 4K and HDR. Nintendo has always stood apart from the technological arms race that fans of Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox obsess over, insisting that first-rate games don't necessarily depend on high-powered computer chips. But you could feel the strain in 2023's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, with its at-times blurry graphics and sluggish framerate. The Switch 2, with a faster framerate of 120 fps, corrects much of the fuzziness. That's not to say it comes close to matching the high-definition performance of the PlayStation 5 or the Xbox X/S. If you're expecting the jaw-dropping graphics of, say, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows ... well, no. There is good news for those of us who have gotten weary of the old Switch's dinky 32 gigabytes of internal storage. The Switch 2 multiplies that by eight, for 256 GB. Of course, flashier games take up more space, so if you want more room you'll have to invest in a microSD Express card — which is a bit pricier than the standard memory card used in most portable devices. Magnets, how do they work? The Switch 2's Joy-Con controllers have undergone some tinkering. As before, you can attach them to the sides of the screen if you're playing on the go. If you're at home, you can attach them to a doohickey that feels more like a traditional joystick. Either way, they're now more firmly connected with magnets, which provide a satisfying snap. Both the left and right Joy-Cons now include an optical mouse, which you can use by placing the controller on its edge and rolling it around on a table. (Nintendo says you can also use it on your pants, but I prefer using a clipboard on my lap.) It remains to be seen how many Switch 2 games will call for a mouse, but 2K's port of Sid Meier's Civilization VII seems like a good candidate. What about the social options? And then there's a new button labeled 'C' on the right-hand Joy-Con. That calls up GameChat, which lets you start up a conversation with other players — provided you've all taken the time to register yourselves as friends. (Eventually, you'll also need to subscribe to the Nintendo Switch Online service, but that requirement doesn't kick in until March 31, 2016.) The microphone is built into the Switch 2, though if you want to upgrade to video chat, you'll need to buy a separate Nintendo camera. Finally, there's GameShare, which lets you play selected titles with other Switch users even if they don't own the software. Nintendo has been emphasizing the new social features in its marketing, though it feels like it's catching up to the competition. The kids I know who play Fortnite or Minecraft on competing consoles seem to have figured out long ago how to chat with their pals. Welcome to the 2010s? Who's got game?As with any console launch, the driving question is: Does it have the games? There are just a couple of Switch 2 exclusives out now: Mario Kart World and Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, a $10 demo package that really should have been free. There are some new-to-Nintendo ports of excellent titles like Split Fiction and Cyberpunk 2077. You can get upgrades of classics like the last two Legend of Zelda adventures. And the Switch 2 is fully backward-compatible, so you can play everything that came out for the Switch as well as a substantial library of older titles. There's no other machine that will let you play future installments of beloved franchises like Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Super Smash Bros. and Animal Crossing. None of those have been announced yet, but some marquee names — Donkey Kong and Kirby — will star in Switch 2 exclusives later this year. There's plenty of competition out there, though, and not just in the TV-connected console market Switch shares with the PlayStation and the Xbox. Nintendo no longer has the portable market to itself, thanks to Valve's SteamDeck. Some models of that device cost less than the Switch 2, and it already has a huge library of PC games. Meanwhile, Microsoft announced over the weekend that it's teaming up with Asus on the ROG Xbox Ally, a handheld that will be out before Christmas. Honestly, we'll probably have a better idea of the Switch's quality a few years down the line, after developers get a handle on what the new hardware can do. If you're dying to get back behind the wheel with Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach right now, though, you know what you need to do.
