Tools & Platforms
‘Those … were just way too big’
When considering the enormous and multifaceted problem of food waste, college students might seem like the least likely culprits — but in 2022, the National Resources Defense Council estimated that campuses in the U.S. wasted an astounding 22 million pounds of food each year.
Food waste is logistically challenging, occurring at both the corporate and individual levels, and uneaten food isn’t the only adverse outcome involved. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food waste accounts for 24% of all “municipal solid waste” in landfills.
Additionally, landfilled food waste is responsible for 58% of methane unintentionally released into the atmosphere.
Methane is “28 times more potent” than carbon dioxide at trapping atmospheric heat, and the EPA notes methane is responsible for “approximately 30% of the increase in global temperature since the Industrial Revolution.”
Michigan State University’s student-run The State News recently covered a new sustainability initiative aimed at tackling food waste in campus dining halls. MSU students wasted an average of 2.96 pounds of food per person, per meal, in recent years, the paper reported.
Arriving at that precise figure wasn’t easy, either. For seven years, MSU dining hall staff spent one day each month “manually weighing” uneaten portions of food, a practice that ended amid widespread campus closures in 2020.
Artificial intelligence has since exploded into virtually every area of life in the interim. In MSU’s dining halls, a startup called Raccoon Eyes AI — with an “environmentally conscious cartoon raccoon” mascot called Rowdy — has stepped in to discourage food waste.
On Aug. 18, “special cameras” were mounted in two of MSU’s dining halls, trained on the spot where diners return dishware and uneaten food on a conveyor belt. Raccoon Eyes AI co-founder Ivan Zou says the cameras “create 3-D models of food waste,” purportedly calculating discarded food types and weights with “a 90% accuracy rate.”
Once collected in sufficient quantity, that information could tell MSU hospitality staff a great deal about what isn’t being eaten, which recipes could benefit from tweaks, and, crucially, how to better portion meals to avoid waste. The paper used uneaten cheesesteaks as an example.
“Those subs were just way too big,” Zou explained. Although Raccoon Eyes AI hasn’t been at MSU long, there’s some previous data from its use at Georgia State University.
In October, Good Morning America profiled GSU’s experience with the startup; food waste dipped 23% in the first four months. GMA cited “AI insights and increased student awareness” for the result, hitting on another key component in reducing food waste: individual action.
Of course, not everyone has an AI-enabled tool to monitor their own personal food waste trends, but tackling it at home is easier in some respects.
Simple actions, such as shopping strategically and ensuring food is stored properly, will maximize its lifespan. Getting creative with leftovers will further reduce the amount of food that goes uneaten at home.
At GSU, students also saw one direct benefit — Raccoon Eyes AI’s data prompted dining halls to serve more Hot Cheetos sushi, a campus favorite.
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This article originally appeared on TVW News.
Washington’s top K-12 official is asking lawmakers to bankroll a statewide push to bring artificial intelligence tools and training into classrooms in 2026, even as new test data show slow, uneven academic recovery and persistent achievement gaps.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal told TVW’s Inside Olympia that he will request about $10 million in the upcoming supplemental budget for a statewide pilot program to purchase AI tutoring tools — beginning with math — and fund teacher training. He urged legislators to protect education from cuts, make structural changes to the tax code and act boldly rather than leaving local districts to fend for themselves. “If you’re not willing to make those changes, don’t take it out on kids,” Reykdal said.
The funding push comes as new Smarter Balanced assessment results show gradual improvement but highlight persistent inequities. State test scores have ticked upward, and student progress rates between grades are now mirroring pre-pandemic trends. Still, higher-poverty communities are not improving as quickly as more affluent peers. About 57% of eighth graders met foundational math progress benchmarks — better than most states, Reykdal noted, but still leaving four in 10 students short of university-ready standards by 10th grade.
Reykdal cautioned against reading too much into a single exam, emphasizing that Washington consistently ranks near the top among peer states. He argued that overall college-going rates among public school students show they are more prepared than the test suggests. “Don’t grade the workload — grade the thinking,” he said.
Artificial intelligence, Reykdal said, has moved beyond the margins and into the mainstream of daily teaching and learning: “AI is in the middle of everything, because students are making it in a big way. Teachers are doing it. We’re doing it in our everyday lives.”
OSPI has issued human-centered AI guidance and directed districts to update technology policies, clarifying how AI can be used responsibly and what constitutes academic dishonesty. Reykdal warned against long-term contracts with unproven vendors, but said larger platforms with stronger privacy practices will likely endure. He framed AI as a tool for expanding customized learning and preparing students for the labor market, while acknowledging the need to teach ethical use.
Reykdal pressed lawmakers to think more like executives anticipating global competition rather than waiting for perfect solutions. “If you wait until it’s perfect, it will be a decade from now, and the inequalities will be massive,” he said.
With test scores climbing slowly and AI transforming classrooms, Reykdal said the Legislature’s next steps will be decisive in shaping whether Washington narrows achievement gaps — or lets them widen.
TVW News originally published this article on Sept. 11, 2025.
Microsoft says its new $30bn (£22bn) investment in the UK’s AI sector – its largest outside of the US – should significantly boost Britain’s economy in the next few years.
Its package forms a major part of a $31billion agreement made between the UK government and various other US tech giants, including Nvidia and Google, to invest in British-based infrastructure to support AI technology, largely in the form of data centres.
Microsoft will also now be involved in the creation of a powerful new supercomputer in Loughton, Essex.
Speaking exclusively to the BBC Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the BBC of the tech’s potential impact on economic growth.”
“It may happen faster, so our hope is not ten years but maybe five”.
“Whenever anyone gets excited about AI, I want to see it ultimately in the economic growth and the GDP growth.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the US-UK deal marked “a generational step change in our relationship with the US”.
He added that the agreement was “creating highly skilled jobs, putting more money in people’s pockets and ensuring this partnership benefits every corner of the United Kingdom.”
The UK economy has remained stubbornly sluggish in recent months.
Nadella compared the economic benefits of the meteoric rise of AI with the impact of the personal computer when it became common in the workplace, about ten years after it first started scaling in the 1990s.
But there are also growing mutterings that AI is a very lucrative bubble that is about to burst. Nadella conceded that “all tech things are about booms and busts and bubbles” and warned that AI should not be over-hyped or under-hyped but also said the newborn tech would still bring about new products, new systems and new infrastructure.
He acknowledged that its energy consumption remains “very high” but argued that its potential benefits, especially in the fields of healthcare, public services, and business productivity, were worthwhile. He added that investing in data centres was “effectively” also investing in modernising the power grid but did not say that money would be shared directly with the UK’s power supplier, the National Grid.
The campaign group Foxglove has warned that the UK could end up “footing the bill for the colossal amounts of power the giants need”.
The supercomputer, to be built in Loughton, Essex, was already announced by the government in January, but Microsoft has now come on board to the project.
Mr Nadella, revealed the investment as Donald Trump has arrived in the UK on a three-day state visit
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