To be Creative

I hope everyone will decide to take control of their lives, to reach inside themselves, to explore who they are and what they have, and learn to use those inner powers. Not for success, not to be seen; that's not important. What is important is that you fulfill your own personal need to keep growing.

Examine yourself and how you work. Get used to the pattern by which things come up in your mind and in your imagination. Find out when and at what times of the day you work best and what motivates you. Is it anger or serenity? Do you want to prove someone else wrong? What sort of inner needs do you fulfill?

Ken Bain, What the Best College Students Do

Be a Poet

In 2016, educational psychologists, Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar found that people who try to solve creative problems are more successful if they behave like an eccentric poet than a rigid librarian. Given a test in which they have to come up with as many uses as possible for any object (e.g. a brick) those who behave like eccentric poets have superior creative performance. This finding holds even if the same person takes on a different identity.  When in a creative deadlock, try this exercise of embodying a different identity. It will likely get you out of your own head, and allow you to think from another person’s perspective. I call this psychological halloweenism.   

Srini Pillay writing in the Harvard Business Review

19 Articles about AI Audio & Video

OpenAI Launches Video Generator App to Rival TikTok and YouTube – Wall Street Journal  

A short video from the UK’s Particle6 featuring AI ‘Actor’ Tilly Norwood (and is completely AI generated) - YouTube

AI video wars heat up - Axios 

OpenAI’s New Sora Video Generator to Require Copyright Holders to Opt Out - Wall Street Journal

What Happened to Lionsgate’s Splashy Plan to Make AI Movies With Runway? – The Wrap

Charlie Kirk's AI resurrection ushers in a new era of digital grief – Religious News Service

The rise of A.I. nostalgia bait – New York Times  

An agreement with the AI startup to make AI movies can serve as a cautionary tale of the pitfalls of embracing a technology too early - The Wrap 

OpenAI Backs AI-Made Animated Feature Film - Wall Street Journal

'AI slop' videos may be annoying, but they're racking up views — and ad money – NPR  

How AI is reshaping the audiovisual industry - UKTN

Google's generative AI filmmaking program Flow has over 100 million AI videos in the program - CNET 

Making cash off ‘AI slop’: The surreal business of AI video - The Washington Post

Voiceover Artists Weigh the 'Faustian Bargain' of Lending Their Talents to AI – 404 Media

Is It Still Disney Magic if It’s AI? - Wall Street Journal

How to spot an AI video? LOL, you can’t. - The Washington Post

The 17 Best AI Movies To Make You Dread What’s Coming In 2026 – Thought Catalogue

AI news videos blur line between real and fake reports – NBC News 

In an era of AI slop and mid TV, is it time for cultural snobbery to make a comeback? – The Guardian

The Power of Small Wins

Try to remember the last time you – or anyone you know – had a truly enormous breakthrough in solving a problem or achieving one of those audacious goals. It’s pretty hard, because breakthroughs are very rare events. On the other hand, small wins can happen all the time. Those are the incremental steps toward meaningful (even big) goals. Our research showed that, of all the events that have the power to excite people and engage them in their work, the single most important is making progress – even if that progress is a small win. That’s the progress principle. And, because people are more creatively productive when they are excited and engaged, small wins are a very big deal for organizations.

Religiously protect at least 20 minutes – and, ideally, much more – every day, to tackle something in the work that matters most to you. Hide in an empty conference room, if you have to, or sneak out in disguise to a nearby coffee shop. Then make note of any progress you made (even if it was a small win), and decide where to pick up again the next day. The progress, and the mini-celebration of simply noting it, can lift your inner work life.

Teresa Amabile talking about her book The Progress Principle  

Introducing AI ‘Actor’ Tilly Norwood

A short video from the UK’s Particle6 featuring AI ‘Actor’ Tilly Norwood (and is completely AI generated)

17 Articles from Sept about AI & Data Science

Predictive AI Must Be Valuated – But Rarely Is. – Forbes

5 Cutting-Edge Natural Language Processing Trends Shaping 2026 – KD Nuggets

Turning “human in the loop” from a catchphrase into a design practice – Microsoft Design 

Foundation models could revolutionize dexterity in robots - McKinsey

A beginner’s guide to data analysis with Polars—a fast DataFrame library - KD Nuggets 

The Last Programmers: We're witnessing the final generation of people who translate ideas into code by hand. - Xipu Li

Pentagon begins deploying new satellite network to link sensors with shooters – ArsTechnica  

GenAI May Code, But Can it Think Like a Data Scientist? – Analytics India Mag

Should AI Nudge You or Tell You What to Do? - Knowledge

AI Definitions: Digital twin technology 

Building AI Products in the Probabilistic Era – Gian@segato

AI definitions: Structured Query Language

We can’t treat LLMs as Swiss Army knives that solve everything, without considering the limitations and without evaluating easy-to-build tailored solutions – Toward Data Science

How the memory of AI agents is evolving -BD Tech Talks 

A generalizable pathology foundation model using a unified knowledge distillation pretraining framework – Nature

AI Definitions: World modeling 

The Generalist: The New All-Around Type of Data Professional? Is over-specialization ending and are data generalists on the rise? - Toward Data Science

The AI Flattery Trap

Managing negative emotions is a fundamental function of the brain, enabling you to build resilience and learn. But experts say that A.I. chatbots allow you to bypass that emotional work, instead lighting up your brain’s reward system every time they agree with you, much like with social media “likes” and self-affirmations. That means A.I. chatbots can quickly become echo chambers, potentially eroding critical thinking skills and making you less willing to change your mind. -New York Times

No man knows how bad he is

No man knows how bad he is until he has tried to be good. There is a silly idea about that good people don't know what temptation means.  -C.S. Lewis

18 Articles about AI’s impact on College Faculty & Administrators

Can Colleges Be Run Using AI? – Chronicle of Higher Ed 

Dozens of fake college websites built with or supplemented by gen AI – Inside Higher Ed

The AI Takeover of Education Is Just Getting Started – The Atlantic

Student Loan Defaults Threaten Federal Aid At 1,100 Colleges – Forbes  

African universities risk being left behind in AI era - Semafor 

A gigantic public experiment that no one has asked for – Popular Information

In California, Colleges Pay a Steep Price for Faulty AI Detectors – Undark  

Universities are rethinking computer science curriculum in response to AI tools – Tech Spot 

‘It’s just bots talking to bots’: AI is running rampant on college campuses as students and professors alike lean on the tech - Fortune

How Do You Teach Computer Science in the A.I. Era? - The New York Times

California colleges spend millions to catch plagiarism and AI. Is the faulty tech worth it? – Cal Matters

AI usage in jobs could lead to AI ‘trade schools,’ expert says - Semafor                  

How One College Library Plans to Cut Through the AI Hype - Inside Higher Ed

The impact of language models on the humanities and vice versa – Nature

Universities in the UL ‘At Risk of Overassessing’ in Response to AI - Inside Higher Ed

AI in education's potential privacy nightmare - Axios

When AI rejects your grant proposal: algorithms are helping to make funding decisions – Nature

Faculty Latest Targets of Big Tech’s AI-ification of Higher Ed - Inside Higher Ed

Obsessions

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions. -Robert Bly 

11 Webinars this week about AI, Journalism & Media

Mon, Sept 29 - How to Start a Non-Profit Newsroom

Who: Brian Lynch Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: New England First Amendment Coalition

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Tue, Sept 30 - Building a High-Performance Team in the Age of AI

What: This session will provide practical strategies for building high-performance teams by integrating AI, optimizing communication, and maximizing engagement.

Who: Constance Staley Professor of Communication, University of Colorado.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Training Magazine Network

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Tue, Sept 30 - Photojournalism: Best Practices for the Digital Age

What: A panel of experts will discuss best practices for photojournalism, including consent and privacy, how to uphold ethical standards, and how to navigate digital manipulation and cover marginalized communities. Participants will also get tips on narrative composition and techniques for making stories that are engaging across all platforms.

Who: Matthew Pearson, News Photographer, WABE, Atlanta; Alyssa Pointer, Commercial & Editorial Photographer, Independent, Atlanta; Christina Price Washington, Assistant Professor of Art, Oglethorpe University, Atlanta; Dylan Wilson, Assistant Professor of Communications, Augusta University, Augusta; Benjamin J. Grady, SPJ Georgia, At-Large Board Member.

When: 6 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalism

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Wed, Oct 1 - Instagram – Growing Your Page

What: Join us as we break down the strategies and features that help small businesses thrive on Instagram. With constant updates on the platform and the algorithm, it is important to stay up to date with Instagram and plan out your growth. Whether you’re new to the platform or looking to boost your current presence, we’ll discuss practical steps to attract followers, engage your audience, and convert followers into customers.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Small Business Development Center of Widener University

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Wed, Oct 1 - Vanishing Numbers — How Federal Data Manipulation and Removal Threaten Journalism and Public Trust

What: Attendees will learn: Why federal data matters for every beat, from health to the economy; How political manipulation and removals of data are reshaping public understanding and news coverage;  Which protective measures keep some datasets resilient, and why others disappear without warning; Why private-sector substitutes can’t fill the gap left by weakened federal systems; Concrete strategies and resources journalists can use now to verify, preserve and report on vulnerable datasets.

Who: Denice Ross served as the U.S. Chief Data Scientist in the Biden administration, where she led the charge to use disaggregated data to drive better outcomes for all Americans; Allison Plyer is Chief Demographer at The Data Center in New Orleans, and co-chair of the Census Quality Reinforcement task force; Erica Groshen is Senior Economics Advisor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and Research Fellow at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research; Naseem Miller is the senior editor for health at The Journalist’s Resource.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Journalist's Resource

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Wed, Oct 1 - AI Literacy for Young Learners

What: In this talk, we will discuss research on designing AI literacy activities with and for elementary and middle-school aged children that integrate social, ethical, and ideological dimensions.

Who: Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens, Vanderbilt University.

When: 4 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Media Education Lab

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Thu, Oct 2 - OpenAI and News

What: Participants will hear from key experts on the shifting landscape for news media and AI.

Who: Christina Lim, partner manager, media partnerships, OpenAI; Jodie Hopperton, product and tech initiative lead, INMA; Sonali Verma, GenAI initiative lead, INMA.

When: 10 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: International News Media Association.

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Thu, Oct 2 - Learning from The Leading Edge panel: Action-First Learning with AI and XR

What: Topics we’ll cover: Human Flourishing through AI: Offload routine work, surface timely insights, and make room for creativity, empathy, and judgment; Natural Language as the New Design Tool: Prompt, don’t program; talk simulations and prototypes into existence with tools like Genie 3 and vibe coding for rapid iteration. AI-Enhanced Spaced Repetition: Duolingo-style, adaptive reps that keep skills fresh in the flow of work. On Call AI Mentors: SOP-trained micro-experts for just-in-time, task-specific coaching, available 24/7. Immersive Skill Building with VR/AR: Safe, repeatable, hands-on practice at scale as devices get lighter and more affordable. Action-First Learning, Supercharged: Start with authentic challenges, add AI feedback and micro-drills, then reflect for faster transfer, tighter loops, and better retention.

Who: Karl Kapp, Ed.D. Director, Institute for Interactive Technologies, Bloomsburg University; Ellen Wagner Managing Partner, North Coast EduVisory; David Metcalf Director, Mixed Emerging Technology Integration Lab (METIL), University of Central Florida; Anders Gronstedt, Ph.D. President, The Gronstedt Group.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Open Sesame

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Fri, Oct 3 - AI Journalism Lab: Adoption Showcase

What: Program participants will share 5-minute lightning presentations of their AI adoption projects.

Who: Kyle Plantz, Senior Director of Leadership Programs; ​Defne Altiok, journalist/editor at Deutsche Welle; ​Tom Caputo, CTO at The Belmont Voice; ​Roni Satria, correspondent/affinity desk head at CNN Indonesia; ​Demetrius Suggs, digital solutions manager at WFAE; ​Giovanny Vega-De Lleguas, Innovation and AI Manager at El Vocero de Puerto Rico ;​Haley Velasco, Senior Editor, News Audience Development at McClatchy.

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: CUNY's AI Journalism Labs

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Fri, Oct 3 - Youth Media, Identity, and Expression: Exploring Voice, Culture, and Empowerment 

What: We’ll explore media created by and about young people, discuss adaptable activities that invite personal storytelling and critical thinking, and reflect on how different educational and community contexts can nurture authentic youth expression.

Who: Catharine Reznicek, Director, Educational Technology and avid Information Literacy advocate.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Media Education Lab

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Fri, Oct 3 - Prompting with Purpose: Best Practices and Techniques for ChatGPT

What: We will move beyond “trial‑and‑error” prompting and lay out a practical, research‑backed framework you can use immediately in your work, studies, creative projects, or everyday problem-solving. This session is best suited for a beginner-intermediate audience.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: OpenAI Academy

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AI definitions: Workslop

Workslop - AI-generated content that masquerades as good work, but lacks substance and does not meaningfully advance a given task. The overwritten language includes unnecessarily long words and empty phrases, similar to student submissions focused on meeting an assignment’s length requirement rather than making every sentence and bullet point push the ball forward.

More AI definitions here

Each time you lie

Each time you lie, even if you’re not caught, you “become a little more of this ugly thing: a liar. Character is always in the making, with each morally valanced action, whether right or wrong, affecting our characters, the people who we are. You become the person who could commit such an act, and how you are known in the world is irrelevant to this state of being.” In the end, who we are inside matters more than what others think of us.

Michael Dirda in a Washington Post review of Plato at the Googleplex by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

16 Articles about AI & the Bigger Questions

AI as teleportation – Geoffrey Litt

Our AI Fears Run Long and Deep – The Atlantic

We must build AI for people; not to be a person – Mustafa Sulyman

Designing AI tools that support critical thinking - Vaughn Tan

AI is a Mass Delusion Event - The Atlantic

On consciousness, AI, and panpsychism - Big Think

Is AI eroding our critical thinking? – BBC

A better way to think about AI - The Atlantic

A Spirited Debate Around AI - Spyglass 

Will true AI turn against us? - Big Think

I asked ChatGPT to invent 6 philosophical thought experiments – and now my brain hurts – Tech Radar

“AI will kill everyone” is not an argument. It’s a worldview. - Vox

‘Existential crisis’: how Google’s shift to AI has upended the online news model – The Guardian

Bringing AI to medicine requires philosophers, cognitive scientists, and ethicists – Stat News

Why the AI “megasystem problem” needs our attention – Big Think 

Philosophers and a psychiatrist consider what we lose when we outsource struggle to AI – Medical Xpress  

How to Spot a Liar

Can you spot a liar? Is averting the eyes a sign? Perhaps nervous behavior like a sweaty appearance? How about rapid blinking? Researchers will tell you the answer is no, no, and no. There are no telltale nonverbal signs of guilt. Not shifting posture or pausing. There is a small increase in pitch—but it’s too small for the human ear to detect. Jessica Seigel writes:

Researchers have found little evidence to support this belief despite decades of searching. “One of the problems we face as scholars of lying is that everybody thinks they know how lying works,” says Hartwig, who coauthored a study of nonverbal cues to lying in the Annual Review of Psychology.  

There’s also “no evidence that people were any better at detecting lies told by criminals or wrongly accused suspects in police investigations than those told by laboratory volunteers.” And it doesn’t matter whether the deceit is verbal or nonverbal.

While liars feel more anxious and nervous, those are internal feelings—not observable behavior. 

However, there are some ways to spot what may be evidence of lying:

1.     Contradictions. If a subject is allowed to talk enough, they may reveal discrepancies in their story or their story may contradict known information.

2.     Details. Someone who is telling the truth about an event is more likely to provide details. In one experiment, they provided 76% more detail than those who were being deceptive.

Stephen Goforth

AI Climate Costs

You’d be hard-pressed to ask enough questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity or other AI services to meaningfully change your personal emissions. Asking AI eight simple text questions a day, every day of the year, adds up to less than 0.1 ounces of climate pollution, our data suggests. The exception is AI-generated video: One five-second clip (is) equivalent to riding 38 miles on an e-bike. Overall, our personal and work-related digital emissions are dominated by just three things: TV, digital storage and internet or video use on your computer.  -Washington Post

26 free (mostly one hour) Journalism courses

These short online courses and webinars will strengthen your journalism skills (and add a line to your resume). Most of the Poynter courses are one-hour in length or less.

Prompt Engineering for Journalists

Learn how to effectively use AI language models and automation tools to enhance your journalistic work while maintaining ethical standards and journalistic integrity. 

Shut out: How Pulitzer winners worked with reluctant sources to tell powerful stories

Writing Tight & Editing Tight

Designed for journalists, editors, students, and anyone looking to refine their writing, this course will teach you how to keep articles clear and compelling—without sacrificing essential details.

Journalism Fundamentals: Craft & Values

A five-hour, self-directed course that covers basics in five areas: newsgathering, interviewing, ethics, law and diversity. 

Telling Stories with Sound

Learn the fundamentals of audio reporting and editing in this self-directed course.  

How to Spot Misinformation Online

Learn simple digital literacy skills to outsmart algorithms, detect falsehoods and make decisions based on factual information 

Understanding Title IX

This course is designed to help journalists understand the applications of Title IX. 

Clear, Strong Writing for Broadcast Journalism

One-hour video tutorial  

Powerful Writing: Leverage Your Video and Sound

In this one-hour video tutorial, early-career journalists will learn how to seamlessly combine audio, video and copy in captivating news packages.  

Writing for the Ear

In this five-part course, you’ll learn everything you need to write more effective audio narratives.

Fact-Check It: Digital Tools to Verify Everything Online

News Sense: The Building Blocks of News

What makes an idea or event a news story? 

Cleaning Your Copy: Grammar, Style and More

Finding and fixing the most common style, grammar and punctuation errors.

The Writer’s Workbench: 50 Tools You Can Use 

Ethics of Journalism Build or refine your process for making ethical decisions 

Conducting Interviews that Matter   

Make Design More Inclusive: Defeat Unconscious Bias in Visuals

How Any Journalist Can Earn Trust

How Any Journalist Can Earn Trust (International Edition)

What news audiences in various parts of the world don’t understand about how journalism works  

Is This Legit? Digital Media Literacy 101

MediaWise’s Campus Correspondents explain the fact-checking tools and techniques that professionals use in their day-to-day work.  

Dignity and Precision in Language 

Research for the Newsroom: Practical tools for adding depth to breaking and enterprise stories

Covering Vulnerable Sources: A Mental Health Reporting Project Webinar

Presented through a collaboration between Poynter and The Carter Center.

Women and prisons: Covering the impact of incarceration 

Safeguarding your journalism against legal threats

AI & the Future of Fact-Checking: Building tools, ClaimReview, Sustainability and the IFCN Code

How to Know who Really Loves You

It isn’t that those who love you ignore your inadequacies. They will, instead, pitch in to help and cheer you along. They will allow you the opportunity to grow and chances to fail. This is what love drives them to do. 

11 Articles about AI Bias

AI reveals gender bias in family courts – PhysOrg

Can AI Help Us See Our Own Bias? – Psychology Today 

Biased AI chatbots can sway people’s political views in minutes - Futurity

Study: Google's Gemma model downplays women's health needs compared to men's – Technology Mag

10 Ways to Guard Against Algorithmic Bias and AI Narcissism – Psychology Today

How journalists can spot and mitigate AI bias - Reuters

Surface Fairness, Deep Bias: A Comparative Study of Bias in Language Models – Arxiv

Grok brings to light wider AI antisemitism  - The Week  

Autocorrect, Other AI Applications, Are Biased Against Rural Language Like Hunting And Fishing Terms – Above The Law 

AI researcher Joy Buolamwini discusses bias in facial recognition technologies at Duke event – Duke Chronicle  

10 FAQs About California’s New Algorithmic Discrimination Rules – National Law Review

AI’s risks

"As with the technology fears of the past, AI’s risks—the unintended consequences of autonomous systems, deepfakes, control by rogue actors, et al.—will be real, but for the foreseeable future they will be manageable in the much same way that every important technology has been in the past—through evolving rules, practices, and system refinements. While it’s easy to imagine a dystopia where super intelligent and highly dexterous legions of robots dominate and revolutionize life on Earth, that’s still the realm of science fiction, where technology fears have always found a home." - David Moschella writing for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation