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nic221.bsky.social
Nicole Hennig
@nic221.bsky.social
5K followers 400 following 4K posts
E-learning dev & AI educator at U of Arizona Libraries. Former head of UX at MIT Libraries. Winner of MIT Excellence Award. nicolehennig.com. Digital nomad from 2013-17, locationflexiblelife.com.
- vegetarian
- car-free
- universal basic income: yes
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nic221.bsky.social
Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · Nov 13
Generative AI News https://nicolehennig.com/gen-ai-news/ (my free monthly newsletter) #AI #Substack #newsletters
10 Tips for Keeping Up with Generative AI
nic221.bsky.social
tiis-falcon-h1r-7b-can-out-reason-models-up-to-7x-its-size-and-its-mostly venturebeat.com/technology/tii… #AI #Falcon #OpenModels
Text Shot: Today, the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi is challenging that scaling law with the release of Falcon H1R 7B. By abandoning the pure Transformer orthodoxy in favor of a hybrid architecture, TII claims to have built a 7-billion parameter model that not only rivals but outperforms competitors nearly 7X its size — including the 32B and 47B variants of Alibaba's Qwen and Nvidia's Nemotron.
January 6, 2026 at 4:34 PM
nic221.bsky.social
New Year Special! Hopes for 2026 from David Cox, Adji Bousso Dieng, Juan M. Lavista Ferres, Tanmay Gupta, Pengtao Xie, Sharon Zhou - Andrew Ng info.deeplearning.ai/new-year-speci… (excellent issue of one of my fav newsletters) #AI #AGI #OpenSource (covers many topics)
New Year Special! Hopes for 2026 from David Cox, Adji Bousso Dieng, Juan M. Lavista Ferres, Tanmay Gupta, Pengtao Xie, Sharon Zhou
info.deeplearning.ai
January 5, 2026 at 4:31 PM
nic221.bsky.social
The Thinking Game | Full documentary | Tribeca Film Festival official selection www.youtube.com/watch?v=d95J8y… #AI #AlphaFold #DemisHassabis (this was really interesting & inspiring)
Movie poster depicting a solitary figure standing in a minimalist, white, futuristic hallway, facing away from the viewer; teal tones frame the scene, with the title “The Thinking Game” at the bottom and a Tribeca Festival 2024 official selection emblem at the top.
January 4, 2026 at 6:42 AM
nic221.bsky.social
Gemini-gems-building-your-personal-ai-expert-army-with-dynamic-knowledge-bases jsonobject.com/gemini-gems-bu… #AI #Gemini (useful)
Text Shot: Gemini Gems combine system prompts + Knowledge Base (10 files × 100MB)—the killer feature is real-time sync with Google Docs/Sheets December 2025 breakthrough: Attach NotebookLM notebooks (300 sources) directly to Gems' Knowledge Base, and use @Google Keep to bypass the Saved Info access limitation Critical limitation: Gems can READ but CANNOT WRITE to documents; they also suffer from "Gem Drift" (ignoring Knowledge Base after 5-10 prompts) The Three-Layer Architecture: NotebookLM (expertise) + Google Docs/Sheets (dynamic data) + @Google Keep (personal context) = high-end consultant experience
January 4, 2026 at 6:03 AM
nic221.bsky.social
OpenAI bets big on audio as Silicon Valley declares war on screens | TechCrunch techcrunch.com/2026/01/01/ope… #AI #audio
Text Shot: OpenAI’s new audio model, slated for early 2026, will reportedly sound more natural, handle interruptions like an actual conversation partner, and even speak while you’re talking, which is something today’s models can’t manage. The company is also said to envision a family of devices, possibly including glasses or screenless smart speakers, that act less like tools and more like companions. None of this is hugely surprising. As The Information notes, former Apple design chief Jony Ive, who joined OpenAI’s hardware efforts through the company’s $6.5 billion acquisition in May of his firm io, has made reducing device addiction a priority, seeing audio-first design as a chance to “right the wrongs” of past consumer gadgets.
January 3, 2026 at 11:50 PM
nic221.bsky.social
The Crisis: Students Need to Learn Different Stuff and I don't think Most Educators understand that stefanbauschard.substack.com/p/the-crisis-s… #AI #education #debate
While five companies reconstruct the world without democratic input, imposing values through foundation models and acceptable use policies, these students are learning the only skills that matter: how to contest any construction of reality, how to identify whose interests are served by which arguments, how to maintain adversarial reasoning when AI generates infinite superficially-plausible claims and someone must decide which ones are true. They're not just learning academic skills. They're learning to be citizens capable of fighting for human control instead of subjects waiting to be absorbed into someone else's empire.
January 3, 2026 at 11:37 PM
Reposted by Nicole Hennig
billmckibben.bsky.social
International law won't constrain Trump's thirst for oil. But every solar panel that goes up makes crude reserves that much less valuable
billmckibben.substack.com/p/just-possi...
Just possibly it's the oil?
A solar panel is the new peace sign
billmckibben.substack.com
January 3, 2026 at 4:11 PM
nic221.bsky.social
Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC76… #InformationLiteracy
Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens
Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people’s attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
January 3, 2026 at 3:23 PM
nic221.bsky.social
Your Key Survival Skill for 2026: Critical Ignoring www.wsj.com/tech/personal-… #AI #FactChecking #context
Caulfield developed Deep Background, a 3,500-word prompt anyone can feed into a bot. Essentially a program, it initializes a multistep session of identifying, researching and fact-checking a set of claims. He recommends using it only with paid versions of Claude or ChatGPT. Deep Background first researches a claim, then engages in multiple rounds of stress-testing its own conclusions. This is especially important, because chatbots rely on the same polluted internet we're all trying to wade through in the first place. Even many apparent hallucinations are actually chatbots' faithful summaries of bad source information, says Caulfield. It might sound paradoxical to use AI to combat Al. But then, using technology to clean up messes made by earlier technologies is precisely what we've always done. After
January 3, 2026 at 3:18 PM
nic221.bsky.social
Data Holds the Key in Slowing Age-Related Illnesses - Eric Topol www.wired.com/story/data-hol… #AI #medicine #diseases #prevention
Text Shot: This is a new frontier in medicine—the potential for primary prevention of the three age-related major diseases that compromise our health span and quality of life. It would not be possible without the advances in both the science of aging and AI. For me, this is the most exciting future use of AI in medicine: an unparalleled opportunity to prevent the major diseases from occurring, something that has been dreamed about but has not been possible at scale due to the deficiency in data and analytics. In 2026, it finally will.
January 3, 2026 at 3:09 PM
nic221.bsky.social
Open-source-qwen-image-2512-launches-to-compete-with-googles-nano-banana-pro venturebeat.com/technology/ope… #AI #images
Text Shot: Alibaba’s Qwen team of AI researchers — already having a banner year with numerous powerful open source AI model releases — is now answering with its own alternative, Qwen-Image-2512, once again available freely for developers and even large enterprises for commercial purposes under a standard, permissive Apache 2.0 license. The model can be used directly by consumers via Qwen Chat, and its full open-source weights are up on Hugging Face or ModelScope, and inspected or integrated from source on GitHub.
January 2, 2026 at 11:27 PM
nic221.bsky.social
why-meta-bought-manus-and-what-it-means-for-your-enterprise-ai-agent venturebeat.com/orchestration/… #AI #Manus #Meta #agents
Text Shot: A Manus-powered agent that helps users do things — shop, create, plan, or manage interactions inside Meta’s apps — would fit naturally into Instagram and Facebook’s evolution toward more agentic experiences. In that scenario, Manus functions less as an enterprise brand and more as an invisible execution layer, powering AI assistants that operate natively within Meta’s consumer ecosystem, where scale, engagement, and commerce already converge. As a result, the acquisition’s clearest relevance is not whether enterprises should standardize on Manus, but that investments in internal agent frameworks, orchestration layers, and governance now appear increasingly well-justified — because that is precisely the layer large platforms are now willing to pay for.
January 2, 2026 at 11:19 PM
nic221.bsky.social
The True Story of the Environmental Impact of An AI Super User medium.com/@tracyantoniol… #AI #environment
Using Al and Caring About the Environment Are Not Mutually Exclusive Im an Al Super User and I Speak for I'he Trees
January 2, 2026 at 1:59 AM
nic221.bsky.social
Cooking with Claude - Simon Willison simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/23/co… #AI #Claude #cooking #recipes
Text Shot: I’ve been having an absurd amount of fun recently using LLMs for cooking. I started out using them for basic recipes, but as I’ve grown more confident in their culinary abilities I’ve leaned into them for more advanced tasks. Today I tried something new: having Claude vibe-code up a custom application to help with the timing for a complicated meal preparation. It worked really well!
January 1, 2026 at 11:55 PM
nic221.bsky.social
The Case for Universal Basic Debate: The Fourth Literacy ("R") for the Age of Superintelligence stefanbauschard.substack.com/p/the-case-for… #AI #education
Think of it this way: UBI addresses economic precarity. Universal Basic Services addresses capability precarity. And in the age of superintelligence capability development that is relevant for that era. That's where Universal Basic Debate comes in. UBI ensures people can meet their material needs when employment becomes scarce. Universal Basic Services ensures people can access healthcare, education, and infrastructure. Universal Basic Debate ensures people develop the judgment and communication skills to participate meaningfully in an Al-mediated society and influence its development. These aren't competing visions - they're complementary infrastructure for the superintelligence age. You need all three. Economic support without capability development leaves people dependent. Service access without judgment skills leaves people passive consumers rather than active citizens. And capability development without basic security means people are too stressed about survival to develop higher-
January 1, 2026 at 11:26 PM
nic221.bsky.social
New Year's Resolutions of the Past: Vices That Became Virtues newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/new-years-re… #history #radio #reading #cycling #MoralPanics #NewspaperReporting
A collage of early 20th-century newspaper clippings expressing fears about radio’s effects on society, with headlines blaming radio for insomnia, addiction, and mental decline, shown below a paragraph explaining historical moral panic around radio.
January 1, 2026 at 4:17 PM
nic221.bsky.social
URL to Any | All-in-one URL Conversion Tool www.urltoany.com (URL to PDF handy to use on your phone, also URL to MP3 is handy for saving audio from YouTube) #tools #AI
Text Shot: URL to Any is a powerful set of tools that lets you convert any webpage into various formats for easy saving, sharing, and reference.
January 1, 2026 at 4:04 PM
nic221.bsky.social
🟡 Semafor Tech: Predicting ’26 | Semafor www.semafor.com/newsletter/12/… (#4 is interesting) #AI #predictions
Text Shot: As data center NIMBYism roils the US and becomes a political issue, tech companies will start investing in the curb appeal of facilities, making them more design-forward, replacing the traditional square-white-box look of data centers. The spaces won’t be reserved for server equipment alone, but sections of new builds will incorporate places for residents to gather, like community gardens, playgrounds, restaurants, and stores. The addition of community spaces will attempt to ease negative sentiment towards data centers, though facilities handling the most important information will remain secluded from the public. The physical security of such facilities will become a point of innovation to account for additional foot traffic near the technology, though cybersecurity remains the biggest threat. Simultaneously, we will see a PR push for data centers revolving around the economic value they bring to localities as a way to thwart political backlash.
January 1, 2026 at 3:10 AM
nic221.bsky.social
17 predictions for AI in 2026 - Timothy B Lee & others www.understandingai.org/p/17-predictio… (interesting predictions)
What will 2026 bring? We asked eight friends of Understanding AI to contribute predictions, and threw another nine in ourselves. We give a confidence score for each prediction; a prediction with 90% confidence should be right nine times out of ten. We don't believe Al is a bubble on the verge of popping, but neither do we think we're close to a "fast takeoff" driven by the invention of artificial general intelligence. Rather, we expect models to continue improving their capabilities - but we think it will take a while for the full impact to be felt across the economy.
December 31, 2025 at 11:47 PM
nic221.bsky.social
8 ways to make the most out of Slide Decks in NotebookLM blog.google/technology/goo… #AI #NotebookLM (some fun & useful ideas)
8 ways to make the most out of Slide Decks in NotebookLM
Nano Banana Pro makes NotebookLM ever more powerful to synthesize information and create visual storytelling materials.
blog.google
December 31, 2025 at 4:11 PM
nic221.bsky.social
With AI, MIT researchers teach a robot to build furniture by just asking - The Robot Report www.therobotreport.com/mit-researcher… #AI #robots #3D
Text Shot: “We’re connecting natural language processing, 3D generative AI, and robotic assembly,” explained Alexander Htet Kyaw, an MIT graduate student and Morningside Academy for Design (MAD) fellow. “These are rapidly advancing areas of research that haven’t been brought together before in a way that you can actually make physical objects just from a simple speech prompt.”
December 31, 2025 at 4:09 PM
nic221.bsky.social
🟡 Semafor Energy: The global race for electrons is just beginning | Semafor www.semafor.com/newsletter/12/… #AI #DataCenters #energy #predictions
Text Shot: Power affordability will be the year’s inescapable talking point. Everyone has their preferred bogeyman: The problem is data centers! It’s wind farms! It’s old coal plants! It’s transmission permitting! It’s carbon regulation! It’s rate design! Politicians will deploy the pursuit of cheaper power as an argument for — and against — all of these and more, with voters deciding which arguments are most convincing. Meanwhile, expect more partnerships and deals between energy companies and Big Tech, and watch the disappearance of clean energy tax credits in the US to see which businesses and projects are really strong enough to survive on their own. It will likely be a banner year for energy storage, which is the skeleton key to combining renewables’ low cost with the round-the-clock reliability of gas.
December 30, 2025 at 4:24 PM
nic221.bsky.social
Google tests 30-minute Lecture Audio Overviews on NotebookLM www.testingcatalog.com/exclusive-goog… #AI #NotebookLM
Text Shot: Google’s NotebookLM appears to be preparing another round of upgrades for its Audio and Video Overviews. In recent teasers, Google pointed to new narration options, including a British English voice that is currently framed as arriving in 2026, expanding the set of voices users can pick for generated overviews.
December 30, 2025 at 3:33 AM
nic221.bsky.social
Meta acquires Manus to expand its AI Agents platform www.testingcatalog.com/meta-acquires-… #AI #Manus #Meta #agents
Text Shot: The acquisition is now public, with the Manus service remaining operational and subscriptions available globally through Manus’s app and website. The company will continue to operate from Singapore. Over time, Meta aims to extend access to Manus’s AI capabilities across its platforms, potentially reaching billions of users worldwide.
December 30, 2025 at 3:31 AM
nic221.bsky.social
Manus launches Connectors for Projects www.testingcatalog.com/manus-launches… #AI #agents #Manus
Text Shot: What's new? Connectors links Gmail, Google Drive, Notion, GitHub, Google Calendar and custom APIs to Manus Projects workspaces to automate workflows globally;
December 29, 2025 at 3:55 PM