What do students lose when they rely on AI for homework?
More than 60% of middle, high school, and college students in the U.S. are turning to AI for homework help, according to a new study from Rand. Some use it to help them brainstorm or like an encyclopedia. Others do it to get answers.
But while kids are relying more on AI, about two-thirds of students surveyed in the study also believe that this AI use will hurt their critical thinking skills.
Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Heather Schwartz, co-director of the American Youth Panel at Rand and one of the authors of the report, about why students are worried.
The Great Security Update: AI ∧ Formal Methods with Kathleen Fisher of RAND & Byron Cook of AWS
Kathleen Fisher and Byron Cook dive into automated reasoning and formal verification as tools for building truly secure software systems. PSA for AI builders: Interested in alignment, governance, or AI safety? Learn more about the MATS Summer 2026 Fellowship and submit your name to be notified when applications open: https://matsprogram.org/s26-tcr. They explain how formal methods can harden critical infrastructure against AI-enabled cyberattacks, and how assumptions, specifications, and proofs combine to deliver real security guarantees. The conversation explores using these techniques to train coding models, enable a “great software rewrite,” and power AWS’s new automated reasoning checks for AI agents and policy compliance.
Sponsors:
MATS:
MATS is a fully funded 12-week research program pairing rising talent with top mentors in AI alignment, interpretability, security, and governance. Apply for the next cohort at https://matsprogram.org/s26-tcr
Tasklet:
Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai
Agents of Scale:
Agents of Scale is a podcast from Zapier CEO Wade Foster, featuring conversations with C-suite leaders who are leading AI transformation. Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts
Shopify:
Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at https://shopify.com/cognitive
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(04:52) AI Reshapes Cybersecurity
(10:16) Formal Methods Foundations
(17:46) Security Properties Assumptions (Part 1)
(21:27) Sponsors: MATS | Tasklet
(24:27) Security Properties Assumptions (Part 2)
(28:31) Helicopter Formal Verification
(38:15) Proof Confidence And AWS (Part 1)
(41:52) Sponsors: Agents of Scale | Shopify
(44:40) Proof Confidence And AWS (Part 2)
(50:33) Automated Reasoning For Policies
(01:04:39) Generative AI Meets Verification
(01:19:42) Securing Future AI Systems
(01:31:19) Agentic Guardrails And Governance
(01:40:44) Outro
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H20s to China + 15% with Chris Miller and Lennart Heim
We’re sharing an episode from ChinaTalk that dives into one of the biggest recent reversals in U.S. tech policy.
The U.S. banned Nvidia’s H20 AI chips to China in April. Now, just months later, they’re being sold—with a 15% export fee. What happened? Why the reversal? And what does it mean for the future of AI competition between the U.S. and China?
Chris Miller—author of Chip War—and Lennart Heim from RAND join ChinaTalk host Jordan Schneider to unpack the policy flip-flop, why China is publicly downplaying interest in the H20, and why high-bandwidth memory and semiconductor manufacturing tools may be even more important than the Nvidia chips themselves.
Resources:
Listen to more from ChinaTalk: https://link.chtbl.com/chinatalk
Check out the Horizon Fellowship to work in DC on emerging tech policy issues like AI chip export controls: https://horizonpublicservice.org/applications-open-for-2026-horizon-fellowship-cohort/
Outro Music: It's a Shame, The Spinners, 1970
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AI Ethics, Strategic Decisioning and Game Theory with Osonde Osoba - TWiML Talk #192
In this episode of our Deep Learning Indaba Series, we’re joined by Osonde Osoba, Engineer at RAND Corporation.
Osonde and I spoke on the heels of the Indaba, where he presented on AI Ethics and Policy. We discuss his framework-based approach for evaluating ethical issues and how to build an intuition for where ethical flashpoints may exist in these discussions. We also discuss Osonde’s own model development research, including the application of machine learning to strategic decisions and game theor
