Latest news with #GeorgiaStateUniversity
Time Business News
a day ago
- Business
- Time Business News
Adopting Generative AI Safely and Responsibly
Adopting Generative AI Safely and Responsibly Generative AI is making waves across industries, accelerating adoption at a pace even faster than the early days of the internet. While this technology unlocks immense possibilities, it also brings with it significant risks. Organizations looking to harness the benefits of AI must strike a careful balance between driving innovation and upholding responsible practices, notes Sourabh Mahajan, Technical Architect at Salesforce Inc. Foster Transparency Generative AI models often lack clear explanations for their actions. It's critical for organizations to keep track of AI activities, monitor their behaviors, and establish comprehensive audit trails. Implementing process platforms can streamline how tasks are assigned to AI bots and agents, with escalation pathways to humans when decisions require final approval. AI should also offer source citations, enabling users to verify information and trust results. Georgia State University's 'Pounce' chatbot, a generative AI tool, provides new students with real-time SMS support and reminders, reducing summer melt by 22% and significantly improving engagement. The bot also refers more complex cases to staff as needed. Generative AI models often lack clear explanations for their actions. It's critical for organizations to keep track of AI activities, monitor their behaviors, and establish comprehensive audit trails. Implementing process platforms can streamline how tasks are assigned to AI bots and agents, with escalation pathways to humans when decisions require final approval. AI should also offer source citations, enabling users to verify information and trust results. Georgia State University's 'Pounce' chatbot, a generative AI tool, provides new students with real-time SMS support and reminders, reducing summer melt by 22% and significantly improving engagement. The bot also refers more complex cases to staff as needed. Protect Against AI Bias Bias can seep into AI outcomes when algorithms or datasets are flawed or unrepresentative. To minimize unfair results, it's important to eliminate sensitive identifiers like race, age, and gender from datasets. Ensuring data diversity and routinely reviewing outputs helps catch and address bias early. Private AI models, trained exclusively on an organization's own data, also allow for better control and further bias prevention. Bias can seep into AI outcomes when algorithms or datasets are flawed or unrepresentative. To minimize unfair results, it's important to eliminate sensitive identifiers like race, age, and gender from datasets. Ensuring data diversity and routinely reviewing outputs helps catch and address bias early. Private AI models, trained exclusively on an organization's own data, also allow for better control and further bias prevention. Integrate AI Thoughtfully into Workflows Structured guidelines are essential for effective AI integration. Process platforms can help define AI boundaries, identify instances where human oversight is required, and ensure that internally trained, private AI models are used appropriately. By providing this structure, organizations safeguard both compliance and operational efficiency ultimately securing an ethical edge that builds trust and supports long-term growth. Structured guidelines are essential for effective AI integration. Process platforms can help define AI boundaries, identify instances where human oversight is required, and ensure that internally trained, private AI models are used appropriately. By providing this structure, organizations safeguard both compliance and operational efficiency ultimately securing an ethical edge that builds trust and supports long-term growth. Embrace Private AI for Enhanced Security Protecting private information and complying with regulations is key. Public AI models are trained on wide ranging internet data, which can introduce privacy vulnerabilities and even inadvertently leak proprietary information. By contrast, private AI keeps organizational data internal and ensures models are trained within strict compliance parameters, thus protecting sensitive information and intellectual assets. Protecting private information and complying with regulations is key. Public AI models are trained on wide ranging internet data, which can introduce privacy vulnerabilities and even inadvertently leak proprietary information. By contrast, private AI keeps organizational data internal and ensures models are trained within strict compliance parameters, thus protecting sensitive information and intellectual assets. Select AI Applications with Discretion With regulations like 2023's Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI bringing stringent guidelines to the U.S., it's more important than ever to use AI judiciously. These regulations call for transparency, rigorous risk assessments, and robust privacy protections. Organizations are advised to deploy AI where it can add genuine value, but to always keep humans in the loop especially for major decisions, like loan approvals, that can significantly impact individuals. Ultimately, responsible and secure adoption of generative AI isn't just about ethics it's a competitive differentiator. It inspires customer trust, reduces organizational risk, and sets the stage for sustainable growth About the Author Sourabh Mahajan is a seasoned Salesforce specialist and technology innovator known for crafting and deploying transformative cloud solutions that enable businesses across various sectors to thrive. His extensive expertise in Salesforce development, system architecture, and consulting has consistently propelled digital transformation, optimized workflows, and delivered tangible business results. Driven by a passion for innovation, Sourabh aids organizations in achieving their objectives through thoughtful and strategic technology integration. Whether leveraging AI to enhance customer experiences, designing scalable architectures to solve intricate business problems, or guiding teams toward peak operational performance, Sourabh excels at turning visionary ideas into practical outcomes. Outside of his professional pursuits, he is a committed mentor, an advocate for continuous learning, and an engaged member of the technology community, dedicated to sharing insights and inspiring fellow professionals. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- General
- Sydney Morning Herald
More than words: How we say it best when we say nothing at all
When my daughter was three, she learnt to shrug. Clumsily, it must be said. Somehow Tess sank her head rather than hoisting her shoulders. A rookie error magnified by chats on the phone, where Tess shrugged to grandma instead of using words. With no FaceTime, no Zoom, my mum didn't know that Tess didn't know. Eventually she nailed it – the shrug, I mean. One more piece of visual vocab to add to the nod, the air quotes, the meh waggle, her withering eyeroll. Separate from words, each gesture offers meaning, a nuance in context. A facepalm in traffic declares frustration, different from its squeamish betrayal during a horror film. Despite their silence, gestures speak. More than enrich our language, as philosopher Damon Young argues, gestures perform as a parallel language, 'the tangible culminations of a living tempo'. They can brim with immensities like the Hercules statue, the demigod hovering his finger on his lower lip, an ageless naïve 'amazed by his own stone self', as Young writes in Immortal Gestures (Scribe, 2025). Gesture derives from gerere, Latin to carry. But carry what? Implicit meanings, of course, from the doom of an emperor's thumb to the hush of the librarian's finger. Yet also the ancestral baggage of the signal itself, to the point our gestures are not uniquely ours. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu claims, 'Society literally informs our bodies in this way'. In effect, we carry our culture through every wave and pout. Loading Even if unsighted to our gestures, as shown by a study among congenitally blind participants. Yes, the blind also gesture, suggesting the embedded necessity of this 'other language', the molecular urge to sketch our story via our anatomy. Nor was that the only revelation. Seyda Ozcaliskan, a psychologist at Georgia State University, led her team observing two lots of blind speakers – one in English, the other Turkish. With no visual learning, each group gestured in its own distinct way. English speakers, recounting the same story, fused action and direction ('rolling downwards', say) into a single movement. While Turkish speakers would isolate each detail via hand signals, mirroring their native grammar where both rolling and descending resist the unity of a verbal clause. Proof that speech and syntax shape each nation's tic-tac. Gesture study is blossoming across academia, aided by video technology that allows researchers to anchor each twitch to its exact point of speech – or pause. Books reflect the boom, with Lauren Gawne, a senior lecturer in Languages and Cultures at LaTrobe University, offering Gestures: A Slim Guide (OUP, 2025) to the genre. Scholarly in tone, Gawne's book unlocks the wonders of alternative spaces that various cultures adopt. As westerners, the semaphored telling of a journey moves left to right: a kinetic sentence. Subconsciously, we flourish hands as though the future lies before us, the past behind our shoulder. Yet high in the Andes, the opposite is true among Aymara speakers, where the past is what can't be seen, while the future remains invisible behind the speaker's back.
The Age
3 days ago
- General
- The Age
More than words: How we say it best when we say nothing at all
When my daughter was three, she learnt to shrug. Clumsily, it must be said. Somehow Tess sank her head rather than hoisting her shoulders. A rookie error magnified by chats on the phone, where Tess shrugged to grandma instead of using words. With no FaceTime, no Zoom, my mum didn't know that Tess didn't know. Eventually she nailed it – the shrug, I mean. One more piece of visual vocab to add to the nod, the air quotes, the meh waggle, her withering eyeroll. Separate from words, each gesture offers meaning, a nuance in context. A facepalm in traffic declares frustration, different from its squeamish betrayal during a horror film. Despite their silence, gestures speak. More than enrich our language, as philosopher Damon Young argues, gestures perform as a parallel language, 'the tangible culminations of a living tempo'. They can brim with immensities like the Hercules statue, the demigod hovering his finger on his lower lip, an ageless naïve 'amazed by his own stone self', as Young writes in Immortal Gestures (Scribe, 2025). Gesture derives from gerere, Latin to carry. But carry what? Implicit meanings, of course, from the doom of an emperor's thumb to the hush of the librarian's finger. Yet also the ancestral baggage of the signal itself, to the point our gestures are not uniquely ours. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu claims, 'Society literally informs our bodies in this way'. In effect, we carry our culture through every wave and pout. Loading Even if unsighted to our gestures, as shown by a study among congenitally blind participants. Yes, the blind also gesture, suggesting the embedded necessity of this 'other language', the molecular urge to sketch our story via our anatomy. Nor was that the only revelation. Seyda Ozcaliskan, a psychologist at Georgia State University, led her team observing two lots of blind speakers – one in English, the other Turkish. With no visual learning, each group gestured in its own distinct way. English speakers, recounting the same story, fused action and direction ('rolling downwards', say) into a single movement. While Turkish speakers would isolate each detail via hand signals, mirroring their native grammar where both rolling and descending resist the unity of a verbal clause. Proof that speech and syntax shape each nation's tic-tac. Gesture study is blossoming across academia, aided by video technology that allows researchers to anchor each twitch to its exact point of speech – or pause. Books reflect the boom, with Lauren Gawne, a senior lecturer in Languages and Cultures at LaTrobe University, offering Gestures: A Slim Guide (OUP, 2025) to the genre. Scholarly in tone, Gawne's book unlocks the wonders of alternative spaces that various cultures adopt. As westerners, the semaphored telling of a journey moves left to right: a kinetic sentence. Subconsciously, we flourish hands as though the future lies before us, the past behind our shoulder. Yet high in the Andes, the opposite is true among Aymara speakers, where the past is what can't be seen, while the future remains invisible behind the speaker's back.
Time Magazine
31-07-2025
- Business
- Time Magazine
AI May Replace $100K Jobs But Create Even More Opportunities
We are entering a new industrial revolution, powered not by steam or steel, but by artificial intelligence. The shift is rapid, relentless, and, for millions of Americans, deeply uncertain. AI is now automating white-collar jobs once considered untouchable: legal research, accounting, medical diagnostics, coding, and marketing. The $100,000 salary that once guaranteed security is, in many cases, being performed faster and cheaper by an algorithm. But if we act now with intention, compassion, and strategy, this technological disruption could become the greatest opportunity of our generation. We could use AI to create millions of new, dignified, middle-class jobs, empower the overlooked and underestimated, and, perhaps for the first time in a long time, rebuild the American Dream from the bottom up. AI will undoubtedly increase efficiency. But productivity is only half the equation. Roughly 70% of U.S. GDP comes from consumer spending. That means we need people with paychecks and purpose to keep the economy growing. Displacing 30% of workers without a plan doesn't grow the economy. It risks shrinking it. More profit, fewer customers. More automation, less inclusion. That's a dangerous imbalance. Read More: 'The Dead Have Never Been This Talkative': The Rise of AI Resurrection This summer, in partnership with Georgia State University, Operation Hope launched the AI Literacy Pipeline to Prosperity Project (AILP3). Fifty young people from Atlanta were trained in AI tools and use cases. More importantly, they were taught to believe that this future includes them. Imagine scaling that model across every city and rural town in America. The most exciting truth of the AI era is this: many of tomorrow's best-paying jobs won't require a four-year degree. They'll require skills, curiosity, digital fluency, and the ability to work with smart tools. We need AI-assisted logistics operators, financial coaches using smart tools, and health aides empowered by AI diagnostics. These jobs can ultimately pay more than $100K, but only if we build the pipelines to reach them. Access and education remain the barriers. We can break those down with public-private partnerships, community-based training, and AI literacy embedded into workforce programs. Inclusion is often framed as the right thing to do. It is. It's also the smart thing to do. If we empower just 30% more Americans, especially from underserved communities, to fully participate in the AI economy, we could unlock 2–3% additional annual GDP growth. That's not ideology. It's economic strategy. Read More: AI Can't Replace Education—Unless We Let It We must tie Community Reinvestment Act funding to AI education and access, incentivize companies to hire re-skilled workers from diverse backgrounds, back AI-for-good startups led by underrepresented founders, and make digital skills the new infrastructure—as essential as bridges and broadband. Let's stop talking about AI as if it's a threat to humanity. The real threat is leaving humans out of the opportunity it creates. We don't need another elite tech boom. We need a broad-based economic revival, one that restores dignity, grows wages, and expands ownership from the ground up. The American Dream isn't dead, but it does need a reboot. AI, used wisely and inclusively, can be the code that helps us run it again—this time, better than before.
Forbes
29-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
College Admissions Is Changing. Here's What Parents Need To Know.
University students hanging out in campus main lawn The college admissions process has always involved a certain level of mystery. But for many families today, that mystery feels more like a moving target. Between shifting enrollment trends, evolving policies, and the sudden ubiquity of AI, even the most seasoned parents are asking: What's actually happening—and how do I help my child make a smart, meaningful choice? It's a timely question—and a necessary one. In July 2025, Brookings Metro released a sweeping new report on youth economic mobility. Their conclusion was clear: 'A high school diploma and even a college degree are no longer enough to ensure upward mobility.' Today's students face a more complex—and in some ways more fragile—pathway from education to opportunity. That doesn't mean college has lost its value. But it does mean that value is no longer guaranteed. It has to be earned, demonstrated, and understood in new ways. As a parent, your role is not just to guide your child through the application process, but to help them ask the right questions. Questions that go beyond prestige and test scores—questions that get at what the college experience will actually do to support their growth, purpose, and future. Focus On Fit But Redefine What Fit Means We often talk about finding the 'right fit' in college admissions. But in this moment, fit needs to mean more than personality or campus culture. It should also reflect outcomes. Support systems. Financial realities. And the alignment between what your child wants from college—and what the college is built to deliver. Start with one foundational question: Where do students go after they leave this place? Not just where they enroll for graduate school, or how many land jobs. Ask what kinds of jobs. What kinds of lives. And how those outcomes differ depending on major, identity, or income level. A college that talks about 'opportunity' should be able to show you the pathways they've built—and how they're evolving those pathways in light of today's economy. Many institutions are starting to do this more transparently. They're publishing first-destination outcomes, showcasing alumni stories, and investing in dashboards that let families see how degree programs translate into real-world success. These aren't just marketing tools. They're signs of accountability. Some schools are setting a new bar for what that accountability looks like. The University of Texas System, for example, offers SeekUT, a public dashboard that details graduate earnings, student debt, and workforce outcomes by campus and major. It's a rare tool that lets families see how different degrees at the same institution lead to vastly different financial trajectories—critical information for making informed choices. At Georgia State University, students benefit from one of the most advanced student success systems in the country. The university uses predictive analytics to track over 800 risk indicators per student and proactively deploys support through academic advising and targeted microgrants like the Panther Retention Grant. Their efforts have helped close graduation gaps across income and racial lines—and demonstrate that fit isn't just about getting in, but about being supported all the way through. Meanwhile, Northeastern University has long recognized that academic fit includes professional fit. Its renowned co-op program integrates paid, full-time work placements with classroom learning, producing graduates who are more likely to land jobs quickly—and often with the very companies where they completed co-ops. Nearly 96% of Northeastern graduates are employed or in grad school within nine months, and over half receive offers from prior co-op employers. The Brookings report emphasizes what many parents have seen firsthand: Today's economy rewards students who have not only learned, but applied what they know. That means internships, apprenticeships, job shadowing, and project-based learning are not nice-to-haves—they're central to how college connects to life after graduation . Ask colleges: Look for institutions that treat experiential learning as part of the degree, not an extracurricular afterthought. That's the new gold Is Here. What Matters Is How It's Handled. Generative AI is already reshaping both sides of the admissions process. According to Acuity Insights' 2025 survey of 1,000 applicants, 35% of students used AI tools like ChatGPT during the application process. On the institutional side, 51% of admissions leaders say AI will significantly change how they evaluate candidates, and 78% are concerned about its effect on authenticity. But the real story isn't whether AI is used—it's how. Some institutions are creating guidance for students on how to use AI responsibly. Others are offering transparency statements or updating essay prompts to encourage reflection over perfection. Ask admissions officers how they view AI in the application process—and whether their faculty are engaging with AI in the classroom. Because your child won't just be evaluated with these tools; they'll be working alongside them in college and in their future career. This Is a Moment of Opportunity—If We Let It Be Yes, the college process is more complex than it used to be. But complexity doesn't have to mean confusion. It can also mean clarity—if families and institutions are willing to speak honestly about what matters most. For families, that means taking a step back from the prestige race and leaning into the questions that matter most: Will this school support my child's growth? Will they be seen here—not just recruited? Will they graduate with more than a degree—with a direction? And for colleges, it means meeting that level of inquiry with transparency, data, and deep care for the students they serve. Because at the end of the day, the most powerful promise a college can make is not about exclusivity—but about transformation.
