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Nicole Hennig

@nic221.bsky.social

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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Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 14h ago

Vibe Check: OpenAI DevDay 2026 every.to/vibe-check/vib… #AI #OpenAI

Text Shot: Now, with Astra , and Opus 5.5–level models, we’re moving toward one persistent agent that knows our work, keeps track of what’s changed, and brings in other agents as needed. This is a form factor that’s been obviously coming since the OpenClaw craze eight months ago, but now the models are good enough that big companies including Meta, X, and now OpenAI are getting in the game.
I find the pace of the updates exhilarating, and manually starting and managing individual Codex or ChatGPT threads already feels a little archaic. But I am also a little tired and confused. Feature velocity is great when it feels coherent, but even a power user like me has a lot to figure out, and it doesn’t all work yet.
I’m excited to keep using these products. I’d be even more excited if the next time I opened ChatGPT, there was less for me to figure out.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 14h ago

Meet OpenAI's "dots" — a new AI assistant meant to take on Meta's Muse. www.axios.com/2026/09/29/ope… #AI #agents

Text Shot: Dots, as OpenAI calls them, are agents that can be instructed to perform a wide range of tasks.

Users provide a goal to a dot and set boundaries for what it can do on its own. The assistant can keep work moving in the background and reach out when it needs attention or more detail to complete a task.
Dots "are an extension of you," OpenAI says, and are meant to compete with a growing crop of consumer-focused AI assistants that people have used to book travel, cancel subscriptions and for all manner of other tasks.
The big picture: Agents are all the rage, and while the technology or goal is often the same, the approaches and capabilities vary, especially for Meta and OpenAI.

Meta dove head first into the consumer market, launching Muse widely to its massive multi-billion-number user base, with the app topping the download charts in its early days of availability.
OpenAI is targeting high-end subscribers, mostly developers, at least in the beginning.
Apple's AI isn't…

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 16h ago

Practical AI for Library Workers: From Concerns to Solutions (my online course, join us! Begins Oct 13) nicolehennig.com/practical-ai-f… #AI #librarians #libraries #educators #courses

Text Shot: New online course! October 13 – November 23, 2026
>> Sign up at Infopeople <<
AI is becoming integrated into many of the tools we use, but how we use it and what we choose to use it for is not inevitable. Library workers can help shape the direction society takes with these technologies.
Rather than treating AI as either a miracle or a menace, we’ll take a balanced, hopeful, and hands-on approach. We’ll take inspiration from solutions journalism, an approach that examines how people, communities, and institutions respond to problems and investigates which responses are making meaningful differences.
We’ll go beyond chatbots to explore emerging forms of AI, including vibe-coding, agentic AI, and other ways AI can help people work with information. You’ll leave with practical ideas, adaptable activities, and inspiration for using AI in ways that strengthen human judgment, creativity, accessibility, and learning.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · yesterday

2026 in LLMs (so far) - Simon Willison simonw.substack.com/p/2026-in-llms… #AI #coding #agents #progress

2026 in LLMs (so far)

Plus Claude Opus 5.5, GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6 Luna, and a new price war

simonw.substack.com

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 3d ago

Meta prepares screen viewing and web voice calls for Muse www.testingcatalog.com/meta-prepares-… #AI #Meta #Muse #agents

Text Shot: Meta Connect 2026 has wrapped up, but Meta appears to have more Muse updates beyond what it showed during the event. We spotted two additions being prepared in a recent Muse web build: persistent access to the agent’s screen and an updated web-based voice calling experience.
The screen view would live in a dedicated tab alongside areas such as identity and updates. When Muse is carrying out a task through its virtual computer, users can open the tab and watch what is happening on the agent’s screen. This could make longer computer-use tasks easier to follow without relying only on status messages.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 3d ago

War Bros Didn’t Always Rule Silicon Valley | - Steven Levy WIRED archive.is/otX1w (this is so good. I remember those days) #AI #techBros #SiliconValley #history

Text Shot: The story as I see it is that beginning in the late 1970s, a new generation of technologists, identifying with the counterculture, operated with a set of values that unleashed innovation and ironically set the stage for the industry’s current wealth. Yes, that movement carried a torch from the field’s defense industry roots. But even as DOD funding kept fueling innovations (Darpa grants provided dough for the GUI, the internet, and Google Search), that new generation was characterized by idealism, a hackerish love of building things, and disdain for conventional practices.
That mindset changed not only the course of the computer industry, but the culture of American business. (Before Apple Computer, a CEO wouldn’t dare come to work in anything but a suit.) Denying the existence of that idealism is not only inaccurate, but it conveniently lets the new generation of defense contractors off the hook for their pivot toward deadly materiel.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 3d ago

PREMIERE: Watch Inside the Madhouse (1887)- The New Award-Winning Story of Nellie Bly aicreatorhouse.substack.com/p/premiere-wat… #AI #video #history

PREMIERE: Watch Inside the Madhouse (1887)- The New Award-Winning Story of Nellie Bly

139 years ago today, Nellie Bly entered the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Today, her story premieres around the globe.

aicreatorhouse.substack.com

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 4d ago

Will the AI Bubble Destroy our Retirement? - Mr. Money Mustache www.mrmoneymustache.com/2026/09/25/wil… #AI #fear #optimism #economy

Text Shot: We first covered this lesson right here on MMM, in the 2014 Classic entitled, “Why we are not really all doomed”. And sure enough, twelve years later the timeless lessons therein remain just as true now as they were back then.

And that lesson is really simple: the world of capitalism is always choppy and prone to wild swings. But if you peek beneath the waves, there are real people in there, doing real work and coming up with real inventions.

In fact, the very idea of an “economy” or a financial system is just another human invention. If the whole system crashes because we don’t like the numbers we see in there, we can literally make up some new numbers and then get back to work. Which is exactly what we did in 2008 and many times before that, and it seems to have worked just fine.

Meanwhile, we still have every tool we ever invented to boost our productivity. And our standard of living, and our economic growth, and our possibility of retiring early, all come from…

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 5d ago

Which Localities Can Capture the Benefits of the Data Center Infrastructure Boom? econosseur.rickecon.com/p/which-locali… #AI #DataCenters

This article lays out the framework for how county leaders can capture the substantial benefits of data center development, address legitimate community concerns with transparency, and avoid policy mistakes that leave communities with
neither the revenue nor the resolution of the concerns.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 5d ago

Generative AI News - issue #15 nicolehennig.substack.com/p/generative-a… (the latest issue of my newsletter) #AI #news

Line drawing of person with laptop with floating icons that say Idea, AI, Solution.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 5d ago

Modern Data Centers Use 10x Less Water econosseur.rickecon.com/p/data-center-… #AI #DataCenters

In this article, I dispel some of the misinformation and myths about data center water use and highlight how modern cooling technology has vastly reduced water use. I also highlight the connection between data center water use,
increased energy demands, and the parallel increases in energy efficiency in modern data center designs.
By showing that water resource constraints are no longer a major issue with data center construction, this article shines a light on the remaining fact that electrical resource constraints are the
primary resource constraint for data centers. Despite the increases in data center electrical efficiency, states and countries need to figure out how to provide more power for these critical components of the US IT infrastructure.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 5d ago

Claude discovers a novel enzyme system www.anthropic.com/news/claude-di… #AI #Anthropic #biology

Text Shot: After reviewing the pre-print, Feng Zhang, one of the pioneers of CRISPR genome editing and a professor at MIT and the Broad Institute, said:

This is an exciting example of how AI agents can contribute to biological discovery. The identification of RNA-repeat arrays associated with reverse transcriptases is genuinely intriguing and merits further investigation. I hope this work encourages more scientists to explore how AI can support their research.
We gave Claude a prompt to search through a massive database of DNA sequences for interesting new examples of RTs. Our involvement was limited to the initial prompt and the lab work, while Claude agents combed through the database, investigated the distinct RT families, and used their own judgment to identify interesting candidates.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 5d ago

Nellie Bly Weekend Begins Today aicreatorhouse.substack.com/p/nellie-bly-w… #AI #video #storytelling #history

Nellie Bly Weekend Begins Today

Four new premieres. One extraordinary story. And it starts with A Nellie Bly Story: Part One.

aicreatorhouse.substack.com

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 5d ago

Opus 5.5: How Close Are We to Automated AI Research? - AI Explained on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9momw… (a lot to think about) #AI #capabilities

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 6d ago

Pulse of the Library 2026 | Clarivate clarivate.com/pulse-of-the-l… #AI #libraries

Text Shot: Clarivate’s Pulse of the Library survey 2026 shows libraries continuing their cautious AI adoption, but with no improvement in confidence over 2025 and few gains in implementation.

At the same time, students and researchers are increasingly turning to AI-powered tools as part of their everyday information-seeking behavior. The gap between how quickly users have moved and how carefully libraries are implementing AI is the central tension of this year’s research.

When investigating the tactics that work, libraries reporting the greatest progress in AI adoption are more likely to have organizational foundations that support its use, including clear governance, defined strategy and investment in staff development.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 6d ago

Meta announces camera-free glasses, dedicated Muse AI gadget, more - 9to5Mac 9to5mac.com/2026/09/23/met… #AI #Meta

Text Shot: Today, Meta announced the Ray-Ban Meta Audio, its first pair of camera-free smart glasses, which starts at $349 and will be available beginning October 13.
The Ray-Ban Meta Audio retains features such as music and podcast playback, calls, and live translation, offering many of the same audio features as Meta’s camera-equipped glasses. They also support Muse, Meta’s recently launched personal AI agent.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 6d ago

Meta debuts its Muse AI agent. Will consumers trust it? | TechCrunch techcrunch.com/2026/09/08/met… #AI #Meta #Muse

Text Shot: The company says the agent can do things like sending emails, booking travel, lowering bills, filling out forms, creating plans, turning recipe reels into grocery lists, sending party invitations, and making purchases, leveraging Link by Stripe for checkout. The latter offers purchase protections, which could potentially ease consumers’ fears of letting an AI check out on their behalf. (Shopify’s Shop Pay and 1Password integrations are also coming soon.)
Muse’s users can decide which apps and services they want to connect, doing so one at a time, to make the opt-in nature of using Muse more transparent.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 6d ago

Meta's Muse is outpacing ChatGPT’s early mobile launch | TechCrunch techcrunch.com/2026/09/21/met… #AI #Meta #Muse

Text Shot: Meta’s latest AI app, Muse, could be the social giant’s next major hit, new data suggests. According to just- released estimates from market intelligence provider Apptopia, Muse’s app on mobile devices has been downloaded more times during its first 12 days on the market than ChatGPT was in the 12 days after its debut. (This data compares the U.S. and Canada markets only.)
Muse also has more daily active users than ChatGPT had at the time, the firm found.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 6d ago

The Overhang - Ethan Mollick www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-overhang #AI #taste #agency

So change is coming no matter how the frontier is paced. It will not happen all at once and it will be uneven, but it is inevitable. Yet inevitable change does not mean the type of change is inevitable. It is increasingly important that we, as a society, develop and share models of AI-human work that enhance, rather than only replace, human labor. And it is equally important that we, as individuals, use Al in ways that enhance, rather than only replace, our own efforts. I don't think there are bright lines we can point to and say Al will never cross them (see above).
But your four advantages are a place to start today.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 6d ago

Anthropic-releases-claude-opus-5-5-beating-fable-5-1-on-key-agentic-benchmarks-at-60-cheaper-api-price venturebeat.com/technology/ant… #AI #Anthropic

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · 6d ago

Openai-releases-gpt-6-sol-and-luna-models-slashing-api-costs-50-or-more venturebeat.com/technology/ope… #AI #OpenAI

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · last wk.

Practical AI for Library Workers: From Concerns to Solutions (my online course begins Oct 13, join us!) nicolehennig.com/practical-ai-f… #AI #libraries #education #solutions #benefits

Text Shot: AI is becoming integrated into many of the tools we use, but how we use it and what we choose to use it for is not inevitable. Library workers can help shape the direction society takes with these technologies.
Rather than treating AI as either a miracle or a menace, we’ll take a balanced, hopeful, and hands-on approach. We’ll take inspiration from solutions journalism, an approach that examines how people, communities, and institutions respond to problems and investigates which responses are making meaningful differences.
We’ll go beyond chatbots to explore emerging forms of AI, including vibe-coding, agentic AI, and other ways AI can help people work with information. You’ll leave with practical ideas, adaptable activities, and inspiration for using AI in ways that strengthen human judgment, creativity, accessibility, and learning.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · last wk.

The Future Climate Benefits of AI Are Worth the Risks heatmap.news/ideas/ai-clima… #AI #climate #benefits

Text Shot: Stop treating the frontier AI labs as adversaries and start treating them as infrastructure. The top frontier labs are producing climate-relevant science as a byproduct. That work is currently underrecognized, underfunded, and uncommercialized. Someone should be standing at the end of that pipeline with a checkbook, or at least using these platforms with a focus on commercializable outcomes. This is what’s happening in techbio. We should be doing the same for climate.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · last wk.

Why-im-not-worried-about-ai-killing-us-all-and-you-shouldnt-be-either - Carl Franzen venturebeat.com/technology/why… #AI #humans #doom

Text Shot: My own admittedly non-expert reading of history leads me to conclude that humans are our own worst enemy — not a machine god or even nature itself. And I believe the same will be true with AI: it’s not the AI models you should worry about, it’s how they will be used by other, less scrupulous and more destructive human beings. Perhaps it is not misaligned AI we should be most concerned with, but improperly aligned humanity.

The worst case scenario I can realistically foresee is that the most advanced technology is hoarded by the powerful to continue exploiting and oppressing the powerless. For that reason, I believe that diffusing AI models as widely and transparently as possible — under international, public frameworks for evaluation and monitoring — is our best bet for staving off any fears of extinction or catastrophic damage caused by other AI itself, whether accidental, incidental in pursuit of its goals, or by design, should it be directed by a human to do so.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · last wk.

TypeSafe JEV Explained: AI Decisions Without a Chatbot www.theneuron.ai/explainer-arti… #AI #Jev #decisions

TypeSafe JEV Explained: AI Decisions Without a Chatbot

TypeSafe’s JEV returns structured decisions with confidence scores instead of chatbot replies. Here’s how it works and where it could fit in AI workflows.

theneuron.ai

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · last wk.

America is in the wrong AI race with China restofworld.org/2026/america-c… #AI #China

Text Shot: China has recognized that governing AI means governing its deployment, not merely the capabilities of its models

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · last wk.

Introducing Expert Intelligence - Steven Johnson adjacentpossible.substack.com/p/introducing-… #AI #ebooks #GeminiNotebook

To keep things simple, the initial incarnation of Expert Intelligence is built around the existing framework of ebooks.
Working with a long list of top publishers, including Penguin Random House, Bloomsbury, Harper Collins and more, we've made more than 100,000 books from the Google Play bookstore available to use as sources inside of Notebook. You buy the book, and you can add it to any notebook in exactly the way you add normal sources like Docs or PDFs. (You can also read it with all the standard e-book reader features in the Play Books app, though we hope to bring more of those reading experiences to Notebook over time.) Inside of Notebook you can ask questions based on the book content, and get grounded answers with citations back to the original
passages; you can combine different books to create a diverse brain trust inside a
single notebook if you want a "team of rivals" approach; and of course you can generate artifacts like quizzes or audio overviews to deepen your understand

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · last wk.

Claude merges Cowork and chat into one experience www.testingcatalog.com/claude-merges-… #AI #Claude

Text Shot: Anthropic is merging Claude Cowork and standard chat into one Claude experience, ending the need to choose between a quick conversation and a larger delegated task. From the same thread, users can ask a question, hand off extended work, and let Claude continue after their laptop is closed. The rollout is reaching new and existing Pro and Max subscribers across web, desktop, and mobile over the coming weeks. Team and Free plans will follow.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · last wk.

Gemini Notebook adds Voice Chats and Interactive Reports www.testingcatalog.com/gemini-noteboo… #AI #GeminiNotebook

Text Shot: Google is rolling out a redesigned Gemini Notebook with real-time voice conversations, mobile audio recording, and interactive learning overviews aimed at students. The update builds on the service’s role as a single place to gather trusted information, organize thoughts and develop ideas, while adding tools designed to make study sessions more personal and focused.
Real-time conversations are coming soon to the Gemini Notebook mobile app on Android and iOS in nearly 100 languages. Students will be able to speak with a notebook, ask questions, receive step-by-step guidance, and interrupt at any time. Every response will remain grounded in the sources added to that notebook, keeping spoken explanations tied to a user’s own materials.

Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · last wk.

The future of the human mathematician anakedrhymejam.substack.com/p/the-future-o… #AI #math (No easy answers. An interesting read)

While some of the work is tedious and exhausting, a lot of the work is fun. It's fun to sit with a stack of paper and stare off into the distance trying to solve a problem.
To scribble some notes, day after day, until the pieces start to come together. To meet with a colleague and hash out our ideas and approaches and fill a blackboard with pictures and formulas and sometimes even a theorem and proof. Even the writing and proofreading is its own kind of Type II fun: the rhythm of the detail-oriented work, the realization of a missing step that has to be filled in, the satisfaction of a paper brought to near perfection.
Now there is ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude (and Kimi and Grok) and we're eyeing them uncomfortably, wondering if we want to bring them into the fun, and whether there will be any fun left for us if