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Tech News
Frederick County's school board voted 6-1 to prohibit AI tools from pre-K through 12th grade, reversing its earlier decision to let middle and high school students use Google Gemini with teacher permission. Exceptions remain for lessons teaching about AI and for accommodations for students with disabilities. The reversal comes just weeks after Gemini was introduced to older students this school year.
A young social entrepreneur recounts how addressing school bullying required peer involvement rather than traditional disciplinary measures. By fostering student-led relationships, the initiative aimed to transform school culture from within. This approach highlights the importance of involving those closest to the issues in developing solutions.
Parents are increasingly turning to generative AI tools like ChatGPT to create school portrait images for their children, often at a lower cost than traditional photographers. They upload photos and prompt the AI to add backgrounds and remove watermarks, effectively producing personalized school pictures without paying for professional prints. However, this practice raises concerns about privacy and data security, as uploaded images may be used to train future AI models without parental consent.
Jagex revealed RS4 at RuneFest, a new RuneScape MMO built with Unreal Engine, alongside a short trailer showing dragon riding and combat. The game is set in the Sixth Age, years after RuneScape: Dragonwilds, starting players in the Ashenfall region, and Jagex says it will complement rather than replace existing RuneScape titles. Jagex also announced a RuneScape animated series in early development with Lyrical Animation and YouTuber MoistCr1TiKaL.
Jagex revealed at RuneFest that it is developing a new RuneScape MMORPG set in Gielinor, built using Unreal Engine and currently carrying the working title RS4. The studio says the project is in its early stages and still years from release, and it will exist alongside existing titles RuneScape, Old School RuneScape and Dragonwilds rather than replacing them.
Researchers critiquing a series of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health studies say they replicated and expanded the same statistical methodology used to link nuclear power plants to elevated cancer rates. Applying that methodology to other landmarks, they found it also attributes huge numbers of cancer deaths to Costco warehouses, private colleges, Harvard itself, and even Major League Baseball stadiums. The critics argue this shows the method produces spurious correlations regardless of the landmark chosen, undermining the original nuclear-cancer papers published in Environmental Health, Nature Communications, and other journals between December and this year.
Frontline Education, an edtech provider of workforce management software for school districts, is notifying affected districts that attackers exploited a vulnerability in a third-party application to access its systems on August 14, 2026. Exposed data for at least one impacted district included employees' Social Security numbers, email addresses and physical addresses. Frontline has not identified the third-party product involved or said when unauthorized access began, and school IT administrators have been confirming the notifications' legitimacy on online forums.
The market for artificial intelligence tools in education has grown from $150 million in 2021 to $730 million in 2026, according to industry estimates, despite various state laws and school board rules restricting AI use in classrooms. Analysts project the sector will reach $18.5 billion by 2036.
An analysis argues that older adults who are retired or otherwise outside workplaces and schools are largely missing from current AI safety education efforts. It notes that most training and awareness initiatives target children in school or employees at work, leaving a gap for those without such institutional touchpoints.
A working paper from Harvard Business School reports that the way people speak can influence their career trajectories, steering them toward more people-oriented, socially intensive roles. The research suggests communication style is a factor employers and career paths respond to, beyond just skills or experience.
Research published by Harvard Business School shows women adopt generative AI tools at lower rates than men. The finding has often been read as reluctance or hesitation among women to use the technology.
Some parents are turning to AI image generators like ChatGPT to create fake school portraits of their children rather than pay traditional school photography fees. TikTok users are sharing the resulting images, describing the practice as a money-saving hack for the new school year.