OpenAI Targets Universities, Google Upgrades NotebookLM

Pivot 5
June 09, 2025

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OpenAI Targets Universities With System-Wide ChatGPT Rollout at Cal State

OpenAI is pushing its “A.I.-native universities” vision by selling ChatGPT Edu to campuses, and California State University will provide the tool to more than 460,000 students across 23 campuses. The plan would let students use the chatbot for tutoring, class-specific study aids and interview preparation.
ChatGPT Edu offers added privacy safeguards and lets faculty build custom bots from their course materials. OpenAI is running billboard ads and student panels while rivals Google and xAI entice campuses with free premium access during exams.
Rolling the technology into classrooms amounts to a national experiment whose educational upsides and side effects remain unproven. Early studies flag weaker critical-thinking skills and “significant” legal errors in bot guidance, underscoring the stakes of handing coursework to A.I.

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Chinese tech giants have shut down key AI functions during the four-day gaokao university entrance exams attended by more than 13.3 million students. Screenshots from ByteDance’s Doubao and other apps show automated messages stating that question-answering services are suspended for the testing period.
DeepSeek displays notices that it is offline during specific hours “to ensure fairness,” while Tencent’s Yuanbao, Alibaba’s Qwen, and Moonshot’s Kimi have disabled picture recognition. None of the companies have commented publicly, and the freeze became evident only after university students posted their lockout experiences online.
Education authorities are complementing the app shutdowns with AI surveillance, biometric checks, device screenings, and radio blockers inside exam centres. Some cities have rescheduled office hours, paused public events, and set up priority traffic lanes to guarantee punctual, disturbance-free testing.

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Broadcom is raking in revenue by manufacturing custom chips that speed up artificial-intelligence computations. Its share price has jumped more than 70% in the past two months, briefly lifting the company above a $1 trillion market cap.
The two-month rally makes Broadcom the fifth-best performer in the S&P 500 over that span. The surge also vaulted the company past Walmart and Tesla, making it the seventh-largest publicly traded U.S. company.
The Wall Street Journal says investors are assigning too much credit to Broadcom’s AI business for the rally though. That disconnect underscores how quickly AI exuberance is reshaping valuations.

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Google has extended NotebookLM beyond the desktop with new iOS and Android apps and unveiled additional capabilities during Google I/O. Core upgrades include mobile access to Source, Chat and Studio panels and refined Audio Overviews that turn user documents into podcast-style summaries.
Users can now pick shorter, default or longer lengths for their Audio Overviews and even join the discussion through a beta Interactive mode. Google also previewed Video Overviews and enabled direct or public sharing of notebooks.
The reviewer reports that the richer feature set has elevated NotebookLM from a novelty to a daily work and study staple. Google has already ported elements such as Audio Overviews into Gemini, indicating a deliberate spread of NotebookLM functions across its broader AI lineup.

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Internal AI manifestos are spreading from CEO to CEO, turning “reflexive AI usage” into a baseline expectation for entire companies. Shopify sparked the wave, and memos from Duolingo, Box, Fiverr, and hedge fund Walleye Capital quickly followed.
Across styles—from Walleye’s cash-prize evangelism to Fiverr’s existential bluntness—each memo delivers the same three messages: AI adoption is inevitable, leaders claim personal daily use, and speed trumps certainty. Tactics range from tying AI proficiency to performance reviews and headcount requests at Shopify to $25,000 bounties and public leaderboards at Walleye.
None of the five companies promise specific productivity targets, underscoring that executives are mandating change before defining success metrics. That gap between decree and measurement leaves employees to experiment and set the rules of AI-enabled work themselves.

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