On Episode 617, I welcome Teddy Svoronos, Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, back to Teaching in Higher Ed. Teddy teaches statistics and public policy and has been deeply immersed in writing and collaborating around agentic AI and its implications for higher education. We explore how the latest developments in agentic artificial intelligence (models that can iteratively use tools and act as agents) are changing both what and how we teach. Teddy shares practical examples from his own work with AI agents for planning a gathering with colleagues to explore how the teaching of statistics and research are evolving, stressing how the meaning of AI literacy are rapidly shifting as these technologies evolve.

Our conversation examines the growing importance of understanding the infrastructure of AI models, the management of cognitive debt, and the ethical considerations around privacy and leveraging these tools. Teddy and I discuss the messy but crucial middle ground between using AI as a black box and needing to understand every technical detail, especially as new agentic models impact disciplines like quantitative analysis. Throughout, we reflect on the importance of metacognition, traceable workflows, and the value of open source AI tools.

Resources from the episode:

• Agentic Everything: How the latest set of models changes things, by Teddy Svoronos
• Course Corrections: Redesigning my course for AI, by Teddy Svoronos
• Pray, Mr. Babbage, by Teddy Svoronos
• Episode 590: Deep Background - Using AI as a Co-Reasoning Partner with Mike Caulfield
• Episode 234: A New Lens for Learning Outcomes with Maria Andersen
• José Antonio Bowen's AI Detector False Positive Calculator
• Episode 605: Teaching with AI - The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Future with José Bowen
• MacWhisper
• The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande

Episode topics:

• AI Agents: Loops, Tools, and Iteration
• Deep Research and Autonomous Task Completion
• Changing Nature of AI Literacy and Prompting
• Managing Documents, Skills, and File Structures with AI
• Data Security and Privacy with Agentic Tools
• Integrations and AI Interoperability with Existing Software
• Navigating Cognitive Debt in Collaboration with AI
• Debates and dialog on Teaching Quantitative Methods in the Age of AI

Discussion questions:

Discussion Questions

1. In what ways has the evolution of AI agents (such as looping, iteration, and multi-tool use) changed the skills and literacies educators and students need to develop?
2. Teddy discusses "cognitive debt" in the context of AI-assisted tasks. What is cognitive debt, and how can it affect teaching, learning, or research practices?
3. How are prompting practices and "prompt engineering" evolving in the age of agentic AI?
4. Why is documentation (such as keeping logs, using plain text, or generating decks/reports) becoming a critical skill in working with agentic AI?
5. How is the division between "surface level" AI literacy (knowing that a tool exists, basic use) and "deep" AI literacy (understanding nuances, managing cognitive debt) impacting decisions about what to teach in higher education?

Related AI Episodes and Resources

The best place to start in locating relevant Teaching in Higher Ed resources and episodes is my dedicated page: AI Resources for Higher Education

I update it every couple of months, though this stuff moves pretty fast. If you are looking for more current information, see below for the dedicated web page for each AI bookmark I save. Or, if you’re getting started with RSS or already have a practice with it going, subscribe to my dedicated RSS feed in your RSS reader/aggregator.

• RSS Feed: Bonni's AI-Related Bookmarks
• Page: Bonni's AI-Related Bookmarks

Remember: I save a ton of bookmarks. Just because I save something does not at all mean I agree with it.

Quotable Words

From Nick Cave, on hope:

Hopefulness is not a neutral position.... It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.

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Affiliate income disclosure: Books that are recommended on the podcast link to the Teaching in Higher Ed bookstore on Bookshop.org. All affiliate income gets donated to the LibroMobile Arts Cooperative (LMAC), established in 2016 by Sara Rafael Garcia.”

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