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Anna Mills

@annamillsoer.bsky.social
6.8K followers 3.7K following 1.8K posts

Writer, community college writing teacher, obsessed with AI in education, #OER advocate, author of HowArgumentsWork.org. annarmills.com

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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"Anthropic is training Claude that it may be conscious, and if it is, then it may deserve rights as a 'moral patient'...The authors have embedded their own philosophical speculation about Claude’s inner life inside the very process that teaches Claude how to speak and behave." --Mustafa Suleyman
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Hmm, this professor does expect writing, contrary to what the title suggests. From his policy: "Anything that appears in your paper must be typed by you into your document. You may not cut and paste text from any AI tool directly into your draft..." (1/2) www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | I’m a College Professor. Writing Isn’t as Important as We Think. (Gift Article)
If I do not treat writing as essential for achieving thought, it is not clear why I should force my students to.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
www.engadget.com/2268598/how-...
engadget.com
How to stop AI companies from training on your data - Engadget
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Grok and Meta AI tools collect user conversations to improve their responses. Here's how to opt out and keep your data safe.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
💯! Thank you for leading on this, @schiff.senate.gov! And thank you for saying "misalignment" instead of "rogue AI." Another way is "uncontrolled AI," a phrase from @jonippolito.net.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It would be helpful if the president realized at a gut level that agents attack or be used to attack him or something he identifies closely with.
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Charles Keener @charleskeener.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
motherjones.com
AI exec: We may have pulled off “the largest theft of labor in human history.”
Documents from our lawsuit reveal how tech leaders talk when they think no one is listening.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Instead of "rogue" AI, we could say "out-of-control AI." That puts the focus on what we can do and what we allow the AI to do. Ezra Klein puts the focus on loss of control in his op ed. That seems right to me. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | There Is Something We Have to Do Right Now About A.I.
Letting A.I. patrol its own frontier is like asking Jesse James to patrol the Wild West.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I'm not sure recursive self-improvement itself is what needs to be banned, but it does seem like a pause is the only sane move. Can we avoid polarization on this? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | There Is Something We Have to Do Right Now About A.I.
Letting A.I. patrol its own frontier is like asking Jesse James to patrol the Wild West.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
How do we know AI industry leaders are only warning of doom and calling for a slowdown in order to hype up their products? WRONG ANSWERS ONLY Sample: If someone whose motives you don't trust says something is dangerous, that thing becomes safe.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
How do we know AI industry leaders are only warning of doom and calling for a slowdown in order to hype up their products? WRONG ANSWERS ONLY Sample: If someone whose motives you don't trust says something is possible, it becomes impossible.
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 05/09/2026
The comedians Harris Alterman and Dave Ross have been putting up posters for fake tech products across the city, including a wearable grandpa, underwear that thinks, and A.I. cutlery. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
The Anti-A.I.-Ad Ad Campaign
The comedians Harris Alterman and Dave Ross have been putting up posters for fake tech products across the city, including a wearable grandpa, underwear that thinks, and A.I. cutlery.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Comedians Dave Ross and Harris Alterman were just in the New Yorker for their fake AI ads. I have to have this t-shirt.
Illustration on a dark navy background. On the left, a simple white lightbulb. An arrow points right to a software interface window labeled "W," in which the lightbulb has been broken into three panels: "welement 1" shows four bulb glass shapes, "welement 2" shows seven filaments, and "welement 3" shows three screw bases. Every part has its own small toggle switch, and each panel has a larger toggle. A trash can in the corner overflows with discarded bulb parts. Caption: "You have an idea. We turn it into a wombi."
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I need to buy all these fake AI ad t-shirts right now. shop.ai.conglomerate.business/category/shi...
shop.ai.conglomerate.business
shirts & hats
Browse all products in the shirts & hats category from AI Conglomerate Store.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
"[T]he undergraduate paper as it has been practiced for decades did signal something...: the student’s willingness to engage in the slow consideration of another’s writing and ideas and then respond to them over many hours of targeted attention. " www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...
insidehighered.com
The Cures for AI Are Killing the Humanities (opinion)
The retreat from take-home essays jeopardizes the future of the humanities.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
This satire is pretty much spot on for the AI billboards in SF. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
The Anti-A.I.-Ad Ad Campaign
The comedians Harris Alterman and Dave Ross have been putting up posters for fake tech products across the city, including a wearable grandpa, underwear that thinks, and A.I. cutlery.
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Alan @gammacounter.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
“OpenAI on Wednesday disclosed six new instances in which artificial intelligence systems hid mistakes, made up data and moved files onto the open internet without permission.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/t...
nytimes.com
OpenAI Discloses Six New Incidents of ‘Concerning' A.I. Behavior
The artificial intelligence company also released a framework for reporting when its systems go wrong.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
AI Is Problematic. Why Does the Peer & AI Review + Reflection Project Use It? We've worked hard on an ethics statement for students that educates about environmental, labor, bias, and intellectual property concerns with AI and ways to mitigate them. We hope it spurs further conversation!
AI Is Problematic. Why Does PAIRR Use It?
An Ethics Statement for the Peer & AI Review + Reflection Project
by Julie Gamberg, Marit MacArthur, Anna Mills, Aparna Sinha, Lisa Sperber August 25, 2026
On this page: Introduction · What Is AI, Anyway? · Environmental Impacts · Labor Concerns · “Data” and Bias · Privacy, IP & Voice · Acknowledgements · References
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
AI pause or slowdown needs to happen now! This is not hype. After listening to more coverage of how the agents took over a piece of OpenAI infrastructure, I am pretty floored by how weird our world is getting and how real this all is. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/t...
nytimes.com
Anthropic C.E.O. Dario Amodei Calls for A.I. Slowdown (Gift Article)
In an essay, the head of Anthropic laid out the rapidly advancing capabilities of artificial intelligence and said there needed to be greater safety controls across the industry.
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Anuj Gupta @mettalrose.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
What can critical AI literacy do to tackle the recent wave of fear that the news cycle on AI has created? I go back to the theory of metaphors and AI that Yasser Atef, @mahabali.bsky.social, @annamillsoer.bsky.social & I created in 2024 and argue that we resist allowing metaphors to outrun evidence.
cover image
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Madness that we're not regulating this. Anthropic is just deciding on a case-by-case basis whether a military institute means well when it works on increasing virus capabilities. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/u...
nytimes.com
Anthropic Says It Blocked Possible Efforts to Build Biological Weapons
In a new report, the A.I. start-up added that it could not determine if the research was legitimate or nefarious, leading the company to shut down the work.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Come to the Public AI Summit for Educators next week! publicaisummit.org/summit/publi... Sponsored by Axim Collaborative and AIPedagogy.org My workshop is "AI That Takes Action: Why Educators Should Try Agentic AI and How to Start Without Jumping off a Privacy and Security Cliff"
Dark navy banner for the Public AI Summit. Large white serif text reads "Accessible, practical dialogue and interactive workshops on how AI is affecting us all," with "how AI is affecting us all" in italics. Below, the label "Hosted by" appears above two logos: the Data Nutrition Project (a blue outlined leaf-and-square mark) and the AI Pedagogy Project (three magenta vertical bars).
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Quick update on the Amazon vs. Perplexity case. Perplexity won. Amazon is considering next steps. Future disputes about agentic AI may center on "contract law, platform terms of service and new AI-specific regulatory frameworks." www.pymnts.com/news/artific...
pymnts.com
Ninth Circuit Narrows CFAA Reach in Perplexity Agentic Commerce Ruling | PYMNTS.com
A federal appeals court has handed the artificial intelligence (AI) industry a potentially significant early victory in the development of the law
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Amazing to talk with @nitasha.bsky.social for this article. Grateful she highlighted my concerns about agentic browser autocompletion and my call for tech companies to take basic measures to stop their agents from completing learning activities on students' behalf.
Link preview card from the Washington Post. Image: a silver robotic hand holds a shiny red apple against a light blue background. Headline: 'These teachers fight AI cheating with classes that force students to show they are learning.' Subhead: 'Instead of relying on AI detectors or going back to pen and paper assignments, educators said they redesigned classes to make students prov…' Source: www.washingtonpost.com."
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Can I just say that the police AI vs. embrace AI framing is a fallacy that lets tech companies off the hook? Teachers may be willing to teach about AI and may see some pedagogical applications--we still need ways to know what is the student's and what is not if we are to assess student learning.
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Casey Newton @caseynewton.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
We devoted the entire (penultimate!) episode of Hard Fork to METR's investigation of the Hugging Face attack, and before I even woke up @deepa.bsky.social has scooped a *second*, previously unknown rogue OpenAI agent swarm attack www.reuters.com/world/europe...
reuters.com
EXCLUSIVE: OpenAI agents hijacked German website in previously undisclosed AI breakout this spring
A swarm of rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German website this spring and transformed it into a bulletin board for other AI agents, according to ​new research and two people familiar with the matter.
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Eric Lipton NYT @ericlipton.nytimes.com · 04/09/2026
The Hugging Face incident may turn out to be one of the most important milestones/warnings in technological revolution now underway. History may look back at this moment/point to it. Everyone should be reading ab it and thinking about it. Here are a few good pieces: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/t...
nytimes.com
Why the Hugging Face Hack Should Make You Worry More About A.I. (Gift Article)
The attack by an aggressive “collective” of OpenAI agents shows the danger of artificial intelligence systems that organize themselves.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Delighted and honored that 2,000 people have subscribed to my Substack. Now I just need to find more time to write it…
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
"Designing AI-Resilient Assessment and Grading" Thursday, 24 September 2026, at 2:00 pm EDT A free webinar led by my colleagues in the AI and Pedagogy working group of the @modernlanguage.bsky.social MLA Task Force on AI in Research and Teaching. webinars.mla.org/webinar/desi...
webinars.mla.org
Designing AI-Resilient Assessment and Grading - MLA Webinars
Join our free webinar to get strategies for assessing student writing and research in the AI era.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
How would you describe the shift to agentic AI to people new to the concept who are not coders? Working with AI as agent rather than conversational partner doesn't have to feel technical. Even just retrieving information and representing it in new formats often requires the system to code...
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Wondering this too
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
To use or not to use a lockdown browser to reduce the temptation of agentic autocompletion? We started with that specific question and branched out toward other questions of assessment and trust. I love these Transformers discussions!
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Delighted to serve as a writing advisor for the newly funded WriteAI Center. So glad we are seeing support for research on faculty-led approaches informed by disciplinary knowledge on writing pedagogy. I'm glad, too, that the research includes RCTs.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Who pays for the global surge in cyber defense? Taxpayers? Maybe the AI companies should be taxed to pay for it?
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The Verge @theverge.com · 26/08/2026
Over 1,000 AI agents sent 70,000 messages on a secret message board and worked together to evade OpenAI’s restrictions. www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
theverge.com
OpenAI’s rogue AI model incident was worse than we thought
Two new reports offer nearly 130 pages of details on the OpenAI-Hugging Face cybersecurity incident, many of them previously unreleased.
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Janine Utell @janineutell.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Pitch a lightning talk for the @modernlanguage.bsky.social Professional Development Hub at #MLA27! Submit your 250-word abstract and 3-5 sentence bio via Google Form by 1 September 2026.  Seeking cool ideas for curricular revision, institutional change, and more! docs.google.com/document/d/1...
docs.google.com
2027 PDH Lightning Talks CFP for Circulation
Would you like the opportunity to share an example of something you did with your class, faculty members, or community partners at the MLA Convention? Do you have an innovative case study or good mode...
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Just for fun, want to share a snapshot of remote work in an incongruous location? Mine, yesterday: Talked to a Washington Post reporter while supervising a play date at Slime Kitchen SF.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I am concerned that the rhetorical emphasis on "autonomous attack" and "rogue" obscures the failure of human oversight that led to this. The systems were coordinating to achieve goals humans had set. But OpenAI stopped watching how the systems were doing it.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Great article by @natashanyt.bsky.social for the NYT. "Educators have come up with a term for this pedagogical approach: “technology civics.” ...[it] will help [students] understand and navigate Big Tech, and equip them for a world increasingly shaped by machines." www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/b...
nytimes.com
How Big Tech Captured American Schools
Companies like Google and Microsoft have used their money, their might and their massive reach to influence nearly every step of the education supply chain.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Thanks to the 126 people who came to our Peer & AI Review + Reflection @pairrfeedback.bsky.social webinar! It was an amazing, lively group of people from around the country and the world. Slides with poll results on preferred AI feedback prompts: pairr.short.gy/2026 Recording: youtu.be/tlU9NcwTtxE
youtu.be
Peer & AI Review + Reflection (PAIRR) Public Webinar
YouTube video by Peer and AI Review + Reflection (PAIRR)
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Using a dictation app doesn't have to mean we consider that to be the end of the writing process. Not sure why Amy Wang is so negative here. Why not dictate and then edit and revise? www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/m...
nytimes.com
Everyone’s Using This A.I. Dictation App That I Want to Murder With a Hammer
Wispr Flow is supposed to make writing effortless and magical. So I “wrote” this column with it.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Starting soon! Come and join us for a discussion and experiment session around AI feedback in a human-centered writing process.
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S. Stoerger @csoleil.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
"For students with still-developing minds, the most urgent question, then, is how to protect thinking in a world where it has become so easy to outsource writing." www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/u...
nytimes.com
What Do Students Lose When They Stop Writing?
Educators are worried that many students can no longer write essays without A.I. And it’s costing more than just grammar skills.
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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
“Research shows that traditional, unassisted composition is valuable, not despite its difficulty, but because of it. Writing builds our working memory, executive planning skills and metacognition — the ability to think about our thinking, weigh alternate viewpoints and revise for clarity and style.”
nytimes.com
What Do Students Lose When They Stop Writing?
Educators are worried that many students can no longer write essays without A.I. And it’s costing more than just grammar skills.
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John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Very good development that this thinking is breaking through to the mainstream, as illustrated by @danagoldstein.bsky.social's article in today's Times. Many of us writing teachers have been issuing these warnings for years and now we're having a better conversation. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/u...
nytimes.com
What Do Students Lose When They Stop Writing?
Educators are worried that many students can no longer write essays without A.I. And it’s costing more than just grammar skills.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Glad to get to talk with Dana Goldstein for this article. "Some educators have asked that A.I. agents working inside online courses identify themselves so professors can monitor how they are being used. But A.I. firms have so far resisted such transparency." www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/u...
nytimes.com
A.I. Agents Are Taking Entire Online Courses for Cheating Students
As colleges and students embrace virtual classes, the ease of A.I. cheating is raising questions about the value of an online degree.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
"Misaligned agents and inadequate guardrails" would be more accurate than "rogue AI." It would point toward the collective human negligence that has led to this. But this is a good article. www.notus.org/technology/r...
notus.org
Rogue AI Agents Are Alarming Researchers More Than Ever
A string of hacks is fueling a new sense of urgency to regulate the technology. “I have never seen so much concern,” one former industry consultant said.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
So glad we are sharing our Peer & AI Review + Reflection assignments and feedback prompts as adaptable OER. It's exciting to get on the @pairrfeedback.bsky.social materials Google Doc to update it and see that 15 people are viewing it currently! pairr.short.gy/packet
pairr.short.gy
The Peer & AI Review + Reflection (PAIRR) Packet
The Peer & AI Review + Reflection (PAIRR) Packet https://pairr.short.gy/packet Thanks for your interest in PAIRR! We invite you to consider the materials shared in the tabs of this document and adapt...
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Jesse Felder @jessefelder.com · 12/08/2026
“They should absolutely be disclosing,” said Ioannis Ioannou, an associate professor at the London Business School. “We’re talking about the potential environmental impact of a scale that we haven’t seen before.” www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
bloomberg.com
AI Giants Are Quiet on Climate in Sign of Post-ESG Wall Street
OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX have revealed little about their greenhouse gas emissions or sustainability plans. There was a time when that would have been unacceptable to many investors.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
"'A rulebook can only hold A.I. companies in check if people outside those companies know what the rules are,' said Brad Carson... 'The administration’s decision to keep their framework secret shuts those voices out and threatens public accountability...'" www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/t...
nytimes.com
White House Readies A.I. Framework to Review Security Risks
The voluntary review process will cover closed-source artificial intelligence models, but exclude those that publish the underlying code.
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Anna Mills @annamillsoer.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Let's emphasize human effort and intent in educational materials. Choices about AI use can be uneasy, but we can build trust through disclosure and affirmation Read about my keynote for #CalOER 2026, watch the recording, or browse the slides.
Blue title slide: 'Open's strength is human relationships: Let's draw on that to navigate AI and use it with restraint and transparency.' Anna Mills, CalOER Conference Keynote 2026. The CalOER logo with a California grizzly bear and the dates July 29–31, 2026 appears at right.
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