Vauhini Vara

How Chatbots and AI Are Already Transforming Kids’ Classrooms Educators across the country are bringing chatbots into their lesson plans. Will it help kids learn or is it just another doomed ed-tech fad?

In case you missed this one:
@vauhinivara.bsky.social looked deeper than the usual at AI in schools.

For sure, AI can do some good things, but I get skeeved when billionaires hope to make more billions pushing anything on children.

And another moral: Listen to your kid. (7/x)

Other moral of the story: people > corporate AI products. (6/x)

Moral of the story: If you're offered something instead of candy, take it. (Within reason — maybe run it by a trusted adult first.) (5/x)

From the numismatics community on Reddit: Is this a Roman coin? Explore this post and more from the numismatics community

OK, I said, humoring him. I'll post it on Reddit. So I did, in r/numismatics: "Is this a Roman coin?" And, later: It is! Roman. Third Century — Saloninus. Emperor for less than a year before he was murdered. It's worth, like, $100, but we won't sell it. (4/x)

www.reddit.com/r/numismatic...

Finally — two weeks later — we found an AI coin identification app. Each time we tried, it identified it as something else: A German pfennig. Etc. The kid kept insisting: No. It's ancient. Roman, specifically. (3/x)

The kid is interested in ancient empires. So for days he kept telling me, I think I got an ancient coin trick or treating. I didn't pay attention. (2/x)

My son was trick or treating in Boulder, CO, on Halloween, and at one house got this offer: candy or a mystery coin. He chose the coin. (1/x)

penguin random house authors, meet the new ceo of prh's parent company! 🤪

haha THANKS!!!

Sign Up for Queries, a Newsletter About Language, Grammar, and Style Written by New York copy chief Carl Rosen.

If you too love copy editing you can sign up here. nymag.com/article/intr...

OMG i made the @nymag.com copy editing newsletter AGAIN AND HE CALLED ME A *REGULAR* 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩 i'm famous

ah thank you so much, that means a lot!!!

ah thank you!!

SEARCHES has been shortlisted for the Atta Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize! 🔥 Congratulations to the other shortlisted authors: Jeyamohan, Srikar Raghavan, Sam Dalrymple, Ameer Shahul, and Manu Joseph.

omg i made the @nymag.com copy editing newsletter from copy chief carl rosen!!!!!! (in addition to being a spelling bee kid i am a lifelong grammar stan 😎)

This whole recent @cdt.org report on the risks of AI in schools is worth a read, but this is the bit that surprised me most (maybe partly because I've reported on AI in schools but not on ICE in schools). cdt.org/insights/han...

yes!!!

my fifth grader and his friends have started a writing group that i'm helping with and the combo of genres is so excellent: nature poetry, realist fiction, essays, stephen king fan fiction, and fan fiction based on a book series about feral cats 😎✨

The Lost Souls of the Internet In Searches, Vauhini Vara probes the ways that we rely on the Internet and how we periodically attempt to free ourselves from its grip.

"Big Tech’s ambition is to create an archive of everything we do and everything we are—an aspiration that is unprecedented in human history. The only thing that comes close can be found in religion." I wrote about Vauhini Vara's Searches @thenation.com (free link!) www.thenation.com/article/soci...

The book from which this extraordinarily open-hearted and moving essay is excerpted in @theatlantic.com is out this week from @nxthompson.bsky.social. Buy it here: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/678434...

I have such good taste! Or @thefrontlist.org does! or both of us. I blurbed and highly recommend two excellent books on this list — @thelincoln.bsky.social‘s METALLIC REALMS and @annanorth.bsky.social’s BOG QUEEN. and my SEARCHES is on there too! 🎉

The Political Awakening of Silicon Valley What happens when tech leaders, like Y Combinator's Sam Altman, believe our system is broken? They treat it like a startup.

I'm sharing this now because things are changing so fast that our collective memory sometimes fails. Here's the full article again. (5/x) story.californiasunday.com/silicon-vall...

In 2017, Sam Altman thought AI could create new jobs for humans. Then again, he also thought it would be possible that human labor would go the way of ... horse labor. (4/x)

In 2017, Sam Altman told me he believed in Medicare for all, free college, and higher taxes for the wealthy, including himself. (3/x)

Back in 2016, Sam Altman implicitly compared Donald Trump to Hitler. (2/x)

In January, Sam Altman gave Donald Trump credit for OpenAI's success: "We wouldn't be able to do this without you, Mr. President." I keep thinking of this profile I wrote in 2017, when Trump was first elected. Here are some excerpts and a link. (1/x) story.californiasunday.com/silicon-vall...

Analysis | Why companies will just keep nudging you to try AI The prodding to try AI products as you watch TV, surf the web or stare at your phone is a classic tactic in technology. It’s annoying, but it works.

Did your TV set interrupt you to hit the remote's AI sparkle button?

Did (ahem) The Washington Post site nudge you to use an AI browser to get FREE ARTICLES?

Have you noticed chatbots paying for phone pre-installs?

Welcome to the PAY FOR OR NAG FOR DISTRIBUTION phase of AI. wapo.st/4hv3Eyp

Why So Many People Are Seduced by ChatGPT What makes OpenAI’s chatbot so dangerous? It’s a fictional character without an author.

"I know fictional characters when I see them. ChatGPT is one. The problem is that it has no author,” writes novelist @vauhinivara.bsky.social. If OpenAI has only tenuous control over the narrator it has unleashed, she asks, who is responsible for its output? www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

Thanks very much for sharing, @datasociety.bsky.social!!