Our Findings

Finding 1: Teachers valued many different criteria but placed highest importance on accuracy, inclusiveness, and utility. 

We analyzed 61 rubrics that teachers created to evaluate AI. Teachers generated a diverse set of criteria, which we grouped into ten categories: accuracy, contextual awareness, engagingness, fidelity, inclusiveness, output variety, pedagogical soundness, user agency, and utility. We asked teachers to rank their criteria in order of importance and found a relatively flat distribution, with no single criterion emerging as one that a majority assigned highest importance. Still, our results suggest that teachers placed highest importance on accuracy, inclusiveness, and utility. 13% of teachers listed accuracy (which we defined as mathematically accurate, grounded in facts, and trustworthy) as their top evaluation criterion. Several teachers cited “trustworthiness” and “mathematical correctness” as their most important evaluation criteria, and another teacher described accuracy as a “gateway” for continuing evaluation; in other words, if the tool was not accurate, it would not even be worth further evaluation. Another 13% ranked inclusiveness (which we defined as accessible to diverse cognitive and cultural needs of users) as their top evaluation criterion. Teachers required AI tools to be inclusive to both student and teacher users. With respect to student users, teachers suggested that AI tools must be “accessible,” free of “bias and stereotypes,” and “culturally relevant.” They also wanted AI tools to be adaptable for “all teachers.” One teacher wrote, “Different teachers/scenarios need different levels/styles of support. There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to teacher support!” Additionally, 11% of teachers reported utility as their top evaluation criterion (defined as benefits of using the tool significantly outweigh the costs). Teachers who cited this criterion valued “efficiency” and “feasibility.” One added that AI needed to be “directly useful to me and my students.” 

In addition to accuracy, inclusiveness, and utility, teachers also valued tools that were relevant to their grade level or other context (10%), pedagogically sound (10%), and engaging (7%). Additionally, 8% reported that AI tools should be faithful to their own methods and voice. Several teachers listed “authentic,” “realistic,” and “sounds like me” as top evaluation criteria. One remarked that they wanted ChatGPT to generate questions for coaching colleagues, “in my voice,” adding, “I would only use ChatGPT-generated coaching questions if they felt like they were something I would actually say to that adult.” 

Table 1. Codes for the top criteria, along with definitions and examples. 

Teachers expressed criteria in their own words, which we categorized and quantified via inductive coding.

We have summarized teachers’ evaluation criteria on the chart below:

Finding 2: Teachers’ evaluation criteria revealed important tensions in AI edtech tool design.

In some cases, teachers listed two or more evaluation criteria that were in tension with one another. For example, many teachers emphasized the importance of AI tools that were relevant to their teaching context, grade level, and student population, while also being easy to learn and use. Yet, providing AI tools with adequate context would likely require teachers to invest significant time and effort, compromising efficiency and utility. Additionally, tools with high degrees of context awareness might also pose risks to student privacy, another evaluation criterion some teachers named as important. Teachers could input student demographics, Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), and health records into an AI tool to provide more personalized support for a student. However, the same data could be leaked or misused in a number of ways, including further training of AI models without consent. 

Another tension apparent in our data was the tension between accuracy and creativity. As mentioned above, teachers placed highest importance on mathematical correctness and trustworthiness, with one stating that they would not even consider other criteria if a tool was not reliably accurate or produced hallucinations. However, several teachers also listed creativity as a top criterion – a trait produced by LLMs’ stochasticity, which in turn also leads to hallucinations. The tension here is that while accuracy is paramount for fact-based queries, teachers may want to use AI tools as a creative thought-partner for generating novel, outside-the-box tasks – potentially with mathematical inaccuracies – that motivate student reasoning and discussion. 

Finding 3: A collaborative approach helped teachers quickly arrive at nuanced criteria. 

One important finding we observed is that, when provided time and structure to explore, critique, and design with AI tools in community with peers, teachers develop nuanced ways of evaluating AI – even without having received training in AI. Grounding the summit in both teachers’ own values and concrete problems of practice helped teachers develop specific evaluation criteria tied to realistic classroom scenarios. We used purposeful tactics to organize teachers into groups with peers who held different experiences with and attitudes toward AI than they did, exposing them to diverse perspectives they may not have otherwise considered. Juxtaposing different perspectives informed thoughtful, balanced evaluation criteria, such as, “Teaching students to use AI tools as a resource for curiosity and creativity, not for dependence.” One teacher reflected, “There is so much more to learn outside of where I’m from and it is encouraging to learn from other people from all over.” 

Over the course of the summit, several of our facilitators observed that teachers – even those who arrived with strong positive or strong negative feelings about AI – adopted a stance toward AI that we characterized as “critical but curious.” They moved easily between optimism and pessimism about AI, often in the same sentence. One teacher wrote in her summit reflection, “I’m mostly skeptical about using AI as a teacher for lesson planning, but I’m really excited … it could be used to analyze classroom talk, give students feedback … and help teachers foster a greater sense of community.” Another summed it up well: “We need more people dreaming and creating positive tools to outweigh those that will create tools that will cause challenges to education and our society as a whole.”

Customer speakers include CarShield Founder, President and COO Steve Proetz; Topgolf Director of Global Technology Delivery Doug Klausen; GetixHealth CTO David Stuart; HD Supply Vice President of IT Emil DiMotta III and more, along with Cisco partners and leaders 

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 15 2025 — Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced its luminary customers and partners headlining WebexOne, Cisco’s annual AI Collaboration and Customer Experience event, taking plance from September 28 – October 1, 2025 in San Diego. This year, executives from top global brands will take the stage to highlight how Cisco is addressing today’s demands for AI-powered innovations for the employee and customer experience. 

WHO: Webex by Cisco, a leader in powering employee and customer experience solutions with AI, is hosting its annual signature event, WebexOne. 

WHAT: The multiday event will explore trending topics shaping today’s workforce across generative AI, customer experience, and conferencing and office tech. WebexOne will feature the latest innovations from Cisco, executive-led sessions on product and strategy news, and customer conversations with inspiring leaders from the world’s leading brands. 

• Featured Brands and Customers: More than 50 Webex customers and partners will speak at WebexOne, including Conagra Brands, Kennedy Space Center, Brightli and more. All will address how they’re partnering with Cisco to revolutionize customer experiences and collaboration with AI. 

• Luminary Speakers: Ryan Reynolds, acclaimed Actor, film Producer, and Entrepreneur, will be the closing keynote. Ryan will explore the art of creative leadership, storytelling, and innovation across entertainment, business, and beyond. Deepu Talla, Vice President of Robotics and Edge AI at NVIDIA, will offer a visionary look at the new era of AI, highlighting the transformative possibilities ahead. 

• Inspiring Cisco Leaders: Cisco executives, including Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer, Anurag Dhingra, SVP & GM of Cisco Collaboration, Aruna Ravichandran, SVP and Chief Marketing & Customer Officer, and others will take the stage to discuss Cisco’s vision for artificial intelligence, customer experience, and collaboration. They will also showcase the latest technology revolutionizing the future of work and customer experience, and discuss how they integrate with Cisco’s broader product portfolio. 

Immersive Training: 

All attendees will also have the option to attend a training program that offers hands-on demos, 200+ hours of learning from 82 classes and labs, and 100+ breakout sessions featuring top customers and Cisco speakers. 

Cisco will also announce its fourth-annual Webex Customer Award winners at the event. 

WHEN: 

September 28 – October 1, 2025, beginning at 9 a.m. PT 

WHERE: 

In-person: Marriott Marquis, San Diego Marina 

Broadcast virtually: Using the Webex Events app 

For press interested in behind-the-scenes exclusive access onsite at WebexOne, please contact Webex PR at webexpr@external.cisco.com. For general registration, please visit the link here.  

Not every artificial intelligence breakthrough is destined to change the world. Some are destined to make you wonder “With all this so-called intelligence flooding our lives, how could anyone think that was a smart idea?” That’s the spirit behind the AI Darwin Awards, which recognize the most spectacularly misguided uses of the technology. Submissions are open now.

Reads an introduction to the growing list of nominees, which include legal briefs replete with fictional court cases, fake books by real writers and an Airbnb host manipulating images with AI to make it appear a guest owed money for damages:

“Behold, this year’s remarkable collection of visionaries who looked at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence and thought, ‘Hold my venture capital.’ Each nominee has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to the principle that if something can go catastrophically wrong with AI, it probably will — and they’re here to prove it.”

A software developer named Pete — who asked that his last name not be used to protect his privacy — launched the AI Darwin Awards last month, mostly as a joke, but also as a cheeky reminder that humans ultimately decide how technology gets deployed.

Don’t Blame The Chainsaw

“Artificial intelligence is just a tool — like a chainsaw, nuclear reactor or particularly aggressive blender,” reads the website for the awards. “It’s not the chainsaw’s fault when someone decides to juggle it at a dinner party.

“We celebrate the humans who looked at powerful AI systems and thought, ‘You know what this needs? Less testing, more ambition, and definitely no safety protocols!’ These visionaries remind us that human creativity in finding new ways to endanger ourselves knows no bounds.”

The AI Darwin Awards are not affiliated with the original Darwin Awards, which famously call out people who, through extraordinarily foolish choices, “protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives.” Now that we let machines make dumb decisions for us too, it’s only fair they get their own awards.

Who Will Take The Crown?

Among the contenders for the inaugural AI Darwin Awards winner are the lawyers who defended MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in a defamation lawsuit. They submitted an AI-generated brief with almost 30 defective citations, misquotes and references to completely fictional court cases. A federal judge fined the attorneys for their misstep, saying they violated a federal law requiring that lawyers certify court filings are grounded in the actual law.

Another nominee: the AI-generated summer reading list published earlier this year by the Chicago Sun Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer that contained fake books by real authors. “WTAF. I did not write a book called Boiling Point,” one of those authors, Rebecca Makkai, posted to BlueSky. Another writer, Min Jin Lee, also felt the need to issue a clarification.

“I have not written and will not be writing a novel called Nightshare Market,” the Pachinko author wrote on X. “Thank you.”

Then there’s the executive producer at Xbox Games Studios who suggested scores of newly laid-off employees should turn to chatbots for emotional support after losing their jobs, an idea that did not go over well.

“Suggesting that people process job loss trauma through chatbot conversations represents either breathtaking tone-deafness or groundbreaking faith in AI therapy — likely both,” the submission reads.

What Inspired The AI Darwin Awards?

The creator of the awards, who lives in Melbourne, Australia, and has worked in software for three decades, said he frequently uses large language models, including to craft the irreverent text for the AI Darwin Awards website. “It takes a lot of steering from myself to give it the desired tone, but the vast majority of actual content, probably 99%, is all the work of my LLM minions,” he said in an interview.

Pete got the idea for the awards as he and co-workers shared their experiences with AI on Slack. “Occasionally someone would post the latest AI blunder of the day and we’d all have either a good chuckle, or eye-roll or both,” he said.

The awards sit somewhere between reality and satire.

“AI will mean lots of good things for us all and it will mean lots of bad things,” the contest’s creator said. “We just need to work out how to try and increase the good and decrease the bad. In fact, our first task is to identify both the good and the bad. Hopefully the AI Darwin Awards can be a small part of that by highlighting some of the ‘bad.’”

He plans to invite the public to vote on candidates in January, with the winner to be announced in February.

For those who’d rather not win an AI Darwin Award, the site includes a handy guide for how for avoiding the dubious distinction. It includes these tips: “Test your AI systems in safe environments before deploying them globally,” “consider hiring humans for tasks that require empathy, creativity or basic common sense” and “ask ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ and then actually think about the answer.”