In this episode, we explore the latest AI developments shaping education, safety, and privacy—from free AI tools for teachers to new parental alerts for teen conversations and Meta’s backlash over deepfakes. We also discuss OpenAI’s rumored moving AI device and what these changes could mean for the future of everyday life.
In this episode, we explore the latest AI developments shaping education, safety, and privacy—from free AI tools for teachers to new parental alerts for teen conversations and Meta’s backlash over deepfakes. We also discuss OpenAI’s rumored moving AI device and what these changes could mean for the future of everyday life.
Key Topics
Links:
Anthropic gives verified US K-12 teachers free premium Claude access, with curriculum-aligned lesson planning (Anthropic)
Alerting Parents if Teens Show Signs of Distress in Conversations With Meta AI (Facebook)
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Stay curious, stay informed, and stay hydrated! See you next week with more pivotal AI insights.
Ashley Coffey (00:00.219)
Welcome back to AI News that you should know about for July 21st. I'm your host, Ashley Coffee.
Daniel Hill (00:06.434)
And I'm Daniel Hill. In a world full of a lot of AI news, we consolidate it into small digestible bite sized pieces in a way you can understand and digest quickly.
Ashley Coffey (00:17.061)
And we have some exciting news for you. Thank you to your feedback and your support. We're excited to announce that we're moving from publishing our episodes once a week to publishing it twice a week. So now you get even more AI news so you can stay ahead of the curve and gain a competitive advantage in this wild world of business. But make sure to reach out to us. We love hearing from people who listen to the show and who gain value for the information that we share. Today on the show, we'll be talking about
Anthropic gives verified US K through 12 teachers free premium quad access with curriculum aligned lesson planning and alerting parents of teens show signs of distress and conversations with meta AI.
Daniel Hill (00:59.406)
We'll covering all of that on our show today, but first a quick word from our sponsors.
Ashley Coffey (01:05.573)
Welcome back. Let's dive in. All right, Anthropic gives verified US K through 12 teachers free premium Claude access with curriculum aligned lesson planning. This is exciting. This is coming straight from Claude's blog. And what they're offering is the free access to Claude pro features, lesson planning, and differentiation, and connection to curriculum mapped to academic standards in all 50 states.
and terms written for K through 12. They don't train on your conversations and student information is handled under a data processing agreement built around FERPA. So if you go to the website, which we'll link in the show notes, you can get more information about the terms. But who is this for? It's for teachers and individual educators working in US K through 12 schools. So that includes classroom teachers in any subject and any grade from kindergarten through 12th grade.
instructional coaches, specialists, interventionists, and librarians, counselors, and other certified staff. And you verify with a school email, which would be a .edu, and you use Claude for educational purposes. So you can verify this through Claude directly, and you get access to free. What I like here is that they're not using your data to train their conversations, and they take protection and security very seriously through their encryption and how they route the data.
and how they delete the data as well, which is so important to think about, not just the beginning, but the middle and the end. So this is exciting to hear that there's a company supporting educators across the US. What are your thoughts, Daniel?
Daniel Hill (02:45.813)
I actually have a lot of things to discuss about this article. So, first, I think educators are looking at how many students are going home and using AI for their homework. Are they thinking to themselves, well, if you're using AI for your homework, why can't I use AI for the lesson plans? Right. And so Anthropic is recognizing that. But also, how many times are teachers knowing that the students are going to use AI for the homework, shouldn't they have a chance to flip that and say, okay.
We're going to use AI in the classroom instead. And then you will have to go home and come up with reasons why the AI is wrong or do other research to indicate how the AI answer could be better. Like I think instead of going home expecting the student to go home and do homework that we know they're just going to use AI for, instead, use the AI in the classroom and then flip that. So it forces the student to go home and do actual work and thought instead. So I like that.
This is, I think, setting up the teachers for success. But also I was thinking about the Google model. And I can't remember if we've talked about this previously, but what did Google do? They rolled out their Chromebooks to students as an inexpensive way to get into the Google experience. They have the Google Classroom that got students using their environment. And then what happens? They go into the working world and they say, Google workspace, right? Because I've been using Google Classroom when I was in high school, when I was in college, and now
Ashley Coffey (03:52.367)
Yeah.
Daniel Hill (04:09.279)
I'm ready to use it in my professional life. And so I think the same thing. If teachers are creating lesson plans using Claude, when these students eventually sign up for their own AI plans, whether in college or at their first job, what are they going to pick? Maybe Claude because they have been using it all along or seeing how it works all along. So I think that's a long-term play that Anthropic is copying from Google's playbook.
Ashley Coffey (04:33.211)
I like that you mentioned that because people forget about Google classrooms and how important and pivotal those were during COVID. And not just for classrooms for academic purposes, but also for businesses, for onboarding, for training. So there's a lot of applications there that I think you're right, Anthropoc is taking a page from. But what I like most here is it's reducing barrier to access for teachers who, for example, I'm in Oklahoma, we're 50th in education.
Daniel Hill (04:40.82)
Mm, mm.
Ashley Coffey (05:03.479)
and teachers don't make very much money, like less than $50,000 if you're lucky. So the fact, and a lot of teachers have to use money out of their own pockets just to get paper for the classroom, which is so ridiculous to think about. But I like that a company recognizes that they can do something and reduce barrier to access, which can therefore improve learning outcomes for the future generations. So pretty exciting stuff. We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll be talking about...
Daniel Hill (05:28.525)
That is
Ashley Coffey (05:33.591)
alerting parents if teens show signs of distress in conversations with meta AI.
Daniel Hill (05:41.058)
Welcome back. Our next story: Meta AI will begin alerting parents if teens show signs of distress in conversations. By way of background, we've seen that teenagers are using AI to have conversations that really lead to just horribly sad outcomes. Teenagers have had conversations with AI to plan shootings or plan suicide. This is distressing. There's no doubt about it. We've talked on the show how companies need to do more in terms of providing tools to prevent these sorts of situations. Here's the news.
Meta has added new alerts for parents whose kids discuss sensitive topics with Meta AI. The goal here is to ensure that parents remain aware of potential concerns related to their kids' AI chatbot conversations. First, parents will get alerted by Meta when their children engage in AI discussions related to suicide and self-harm. When a teenager engages in self-harm-related chats, parents will be sent an alert.
Which includes links to relevant support resources. That is first a great step in the right direction. The quote from Meta: when a teenager suggests they may be thinking about suicide or self-harm, Meta AI already directs them to crisis helplines and encourages them to reach out to a parent or another trusted adult like a counselor. Now we'll proactively alert supervising parents if their teens' meta-AI chat suggests they may be at risk based on signs developed with experts. End quote.
Meta has said the reports will include a range of signals, but it will err on the side of caution, which I like. The company is working to refine its messaging to maximize safety without causing distress to parents. Meta said, quote, these alerts are live now for parents using Instagram parental supervision in the United States, UK, Australia, and Canada, and will be available for supervising parents globally by the end of the year. End quote. Ashley, what are your thoughts on this?
Ashley Coffey (07:35.837)
I'm glad that you picked this and just hearing you read it gives me feelings. And my thoughts are how many, this is gonna sound really bad, but it is, how many kids have to die for meta to say, hey, we're gonna build something. I bet you I would put money on that this is only coming out of a lawsuit settlement that they had with a parent. And that's been happening everywhere of parents suing companies and then they'll end up settling. We never know what happens.
This is more reactive than proactive and I really urge companies to think about proactively putting these mechanisms in place, not after the fact. Because imagine if Meta rolled out this feature as soon as they rolled out AI, they could have saved so many lives. So many lives. And when it comes to lives of the kids, that's just something that I take, and we all take really seriously. So I'm glad that you mentioned this. It's nice that it's progress, but we need more than this.
Daniel Hill (08:35.519)
I agree. And I was thinking about how more is needed from the other side of the coin, meaning we're talking about teenagers, which is important and probably most important. But older people, adults are just as susceptible to these kinds of feelings. They might deal with it differently because teenagers look at the world one way and adults or older people look at the world in a different way. And that's fine. But to have some kind of alert system.
That tells another trusted family member, close friend, hey, just so you know, your friend or family member has been talking to AI about suicide, about self-harm, about sh other violent things. That I think is actually a really good protection that I would like to see in place because we've seen situations where older people have done things, made decisions, gone places that they should not have on the encouragement of an AI. How could that have been prevented? Well, if a family member was alerted, the same way a parent gets alerted by a teen.
talking to an AI inappropriately, could that have potentially saved a life, multiple lives? So I think more protection is needed, but I do think this is a really good step in the right direction.
Ashley Coffey (09:43.29)
Absolutely. remember we've covered several of those instances of older people and younger people too. AI psychosis doesn't wear a face. It could be anyone. It could be an executive. It could be your barista. And I think we're seeing more of that and not talking about it enough. So it's nice that there are some mechanisms being put into place to get ahead of that. But I think the problem is more prevalent than we know.
Daniel Hill (10:06.657)
I agree. That is it for our AI news you should know about this week. If you want to find links to the articles that we have discussed today, you can find them in the show notes, along with links for how to connect with us on social media. You can find me on Instagram at Daniel Hill Media.
Ashley Coffey (10:22.818)
And if you want to continue the conversation with more tech talk, you can find me on Instagram, threads and Facebook, Ashley or coffee 89. We can sign up for the latest AI updates newsletter at the link in my bio.
Daniel Hill (10:35.927)
Thank you for listening and come back next time for more AI news you should know about.