From BYO AI to the Turing Test: What Just Happened in Education?

This week, Dan and Ray dive into a whirlwind of AI news shaking up the education world. From $40K private schools with AI tutors to universities reporting chatbot-driven grade boosts, they unpack what’s hype and what’s happening. Plus, they explore the ethics of AI image generation, energy use in data centers, and whether GPT-4.5 is now officially more human than human.

News

Alpha School - AI school in Texas
News report: https://www.foxnews.com/media/texas-private-schools-use-ai-tutor-rockets-student-test-scores-top-2-country
https://alpha.school/

Macquarie University students’ exam scores up by nearly 10 per cent thanks to new AI-powered chatbot
Microsoft case study: https://news.microsoft.com/source/asia/2025/03/24/macquarie-university-students-exam-scores-up-by-nearly-10-per-cent-thanks-to-new-ai-powered-chatbot/

Building an AI-Enabled Workforce: Impacts for Finance, Technology and Business Education and Training 
https://www.futureskillsorganisation.com.au/building-an-ai-enabled-workforce-impacts-for-finance-technology-and-business-education-and-training

The Future of Jobs Report 2025 from World Economic Forum 
https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/digest/

OpenAI Academy
https://academy.openai.com 

Anthropic launched Claude for Education
https://www.anthropic.com/news/introducing-claude-for-education 

Open AI image generation announcement
https://openai.com/index/introducing-4o-image-generation/ 

 

Report: Australia’s renewables can power AI and slash energy costs
https://www.innovationaus.com/australias-renewables-can-power-ai-and-slash-energy-costs/ 

UTS Transdisciplinary Innovation course
https://www.uts.edu.au/for-students/transdisciplinary-innovation 

Research

The Cybernetic Teammate: A Field Experiment on Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5188231 

Large Language Models Pass the Turing Test
https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674 
News report: https://futurism.com/ai-model-turing-test