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Teachers union partners with tech companies to launch AI-training academy

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The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) on Tuesday announced the fall launch of the National Academy for AI Instruction, a $23 million endeavor funded by Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI, three main players in the generative AI revolution.

With the creation of the academy, leading artificial intelligence companies are stepping up their efforts to bring AI to schools across the U.S. OpenAI has committed to giving $10 million over five years, while Microsoft will provide $12.5 million. Anthropic, meanwhile, will contribute $500,000 the first year, said Andrew Crook, a spokesperson for the AFT.

While some educators have expressed concern over being replaced by AI, AFT said it seeks to embrace the technology in a way that protects teachers’ place at the head of the classroom. With this in mind, the foundation said reached out to tech companies for their assistance in developing the AI-training academy.

“The direct connection between a teacher and their kids can never be replaced by new technologies, but if we learn how to harness it, set commonsense guardrails and put teachers in the driver’s seat, teaching and learning can be enhanced,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in the announcement.

“We want to do it in a way that teachers can really master the tools,” Weingarten told CBS MoneyWatch.

Courses will begin this fall at the United Federation of Teachers’ facility in Manhattan, New York. Funding from the tech trio will also go toward the buildout of additional hubs throughout the U.S., which are set to open in 2030, according to Crook. UFT is an affiliate of AFT.

The companies say the training academy will offer a space for educators to learn how to harness AI and implement it safely and ethically in their classrooms. The programming, designed by AI experts and educators, will include workshops, online courses and hands-on training sessions, according to the AFT.

“We’re at a pivotal moment in education, and how we introduce AI to educators today will shape teaching for generations to come,” Anthropic co-Founder Jack Clark said in an emailed statement on the partnership.

AFT said the academy will offer free virtual training to all 1.8 million members in its union, starting with K-12 educators. The federation’s ultimate goal is to train 400,000 educators — about 10% of the U.S. teaching workforce — at the in-person facility over the next five years.

AI in education

AI is already reshaping classrooms, as students and teachers have access to AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT, which the latter are using more frequently, according to a recent survey from investment bank Tyton Partners.

With the growing use of AI, comes the overriding concern of how to prevent the technology from being used for nefarious purposes like cheating or plagiarism. Some schools have implemented AI detection software for that very reason.

Meanwhile, research is also beginning to tease apart how AI affects our thinking. A recent study from MIT found that over-reliance on artificial intelligence can reduce brain activity and critical cognitive functions.

Keeping teachers the drivers’ seat is key to harnessing AI technology so that it is being used constructively in the classroom, according to the AFT’s Weingarten.

Gerry Petrella, general manager of U.S. public policy at Microsoft, echoed her sentiments. “We know students are going to benefit the most from this technology when we put teachers at the center of this tool,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

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Impostor uses AI to impersonate Rubio and contact foreign and US officials : NPR

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a signing ceremony for a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the State Department, June 27, 2025, in Washington.

Mark Schiefelbein/AP


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Mark Schiefelbein/AP

WASHINGTON — The State Department is warning U.S. diplomats of attempts to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio and possibly other officials using technology driven by artificial intelligence, according to two senior officials and a cable sent last week to all embassies and consulates.

The warning came after the department discovered that an impostor posing as Rubio had attempted to reach out to at least three foreign ministers, a U.S. senator and a governor, according to the July 3 cable, which was first reported by The Washington Post.

The recipients of the scam messages, which were sent by text, Signal and voice mail, were not identified in the cable, a copy of which was shared with The Associated Press.

“The State Department is aware of this incident and is currently monitoring and addressing the matter,” department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters. “The department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously take steps to improve the department’s cybersecurity posture to prevent future incidents.”

She declined to comment further due to “security reasons” and the ongoing investigation.

It’s the latest instance of a high-level Trump administration figure targeted by an impersonator, with a similar incident revealed in May involving President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. The misuse of AI to deceive people is likely to grow as the technology improves and becomes more widely available, and the FBI warned this past spring about “malicious actors” impersonating senior U.S. government officials in a text and voice messaging campaign.

The hoaxes involving Rubio had been unsuccessful and “not very sophisticated,” one of the officials said. Nonetheless, the second official said the department deemed it “prudent” to advise all employees and foreign governments, particularly as efforts by foreign actors to compromise information security increase.

The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“There is no direct cyber threat to the department from this campaign, but information shared with a third party could be exposed if targeted individuals are compromised,” the cable said.

The FBI has warned in a public service announcement about a “malicious” campaign relying on text messages and AI-generated voice messages that purport to come from a senior U.S. official and that aim to dupe other government officials as well as the victim’s associates and contacts.

This is not the first time that Rubio has been impersonated in a deepfake. This spring, someone created a bogus video of him saying he wanted to cut off Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service. Ukraine’s government later rebutted the false claim.

Several potential solutions have been put forward in recent years to the growing misuse of AI for deception, including criminal penalties and improved media literacy. Concerns about deepfakes have also led to a flood of new apps and AI systems designed to spot phonies that could easily fool a human.

The tech companies working on these systems are now in competition against those who would use AI to deceive, according to Siwei Lyu, a professor and computer scientist at the University at Buffalo. He said he’s seen an increase in the number of deepfakes portraying celebrities, politicians and business leaders as the technology improves.

Just a few years ago, fakes contained easy-to-spot flaws — inhuman voices or mistakes like extra fingers — but now the AI is so good, it’s much harder for a human to spot, giving deepfake makers an advantage.

“The level of realism and quality is increasing,” Lyu said. “It’s an arms race, and right now the generators are getting the upper hand.”

The Rubio hoax comes after text messages and phone calls went to elected officials, business executives and other prominent figures from someone who seemed to have gained access to the contacts in Wiles’ personal cellphone, The Wall Street Journal reported in May.

Some of those who received calls heard a voice that sounded like Wiles, which may have been generated by AI, according to the newspaper. The messages and calls were not coming from Wiles’ number, the report said. The government was investigating.



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Tuya Inc. (NYSE:TUYA) Among Forbes China Top 50 AI Tech Enterprises – Insider Monkey

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Tuya Inc. (NYSE:TUYA) Among Forbes China Top 50 AI Tech Enterprises  Insider Monkey



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IBM rolls out new chips and servers, aims for simplified AI

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FILE PHOTO:  IBM announced a new line of data center chips and servers that it says will be more power-efficient than rivals and will simplify the process of rolling out AI.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

International Business Machines on Tuesday announced a new line of data center chips and servers that it says will be more power-efficient than rivals and will simplify the process of rolling out artificial intelligence in business operations.

IBM introduced its new Power11 chips on Tuesday, marking its first major update to its “Power” line of chips since 2020.

These chips have traditionally vied against offerings from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in data centers, particularly in specialized sectors such as financial services, manufacturing and healthcare.

Like Nvidia’s AI servers, IBM’s Power systems are an integrated package of chips and software.

Tom McPherson, general manager of Power systems at IBM, said the Armonk, New York-based company used that tight coupling to focus on reliability and security.

The Power11 systems, available from July 25, will not need any planned downtime for software updates, and their unplanned downtime each year averages just over 30 seconds.

They are also designed to detect and respond within a minute to a ransomware attack – where hackers encrypt data and then try to extract a ransom in exchange for the keys, IBM said.

In the fourth quarter of this year, IBM plans to integrate Power11 with Spyre, its AI chip introduced last year.

McPherson said IBM does not aim to compete with Nvidia in helping create and train AI systems, but is instead focused on simplifying AI deployment for inference, the process of putting an AI system to work in speeding up a business task.

“We can integrate AI capabilities seamlessly into this for inference acceleration and help their business process improvements,” McPherson said in an interview last week referring to work with early customers.

“It’s not going to have all the horsepower for training or anything, but it’s going to have really good inferencing capabilities that are simple to integrate.”



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