What are we even doing?

Danny Caballero and Devin Silvia

What Are We Even Doing is a podcast about AI from the people who have to deal with it on a Tuesday morning. We’re Danny Caballero and Devin Silvia, researchers and educators at Michigan State University. We teach computing to scientists and engineers. We’ve been doing it for over a decade. And like a lot of educators, we spend most of our time these days trying to figure out what AI is actually doing to our classrooms, our research, and our students’ lives. Every two weeks, we try to put out an episode with different parts: The AI education news. What happened in the last two weeks, and what the discourse is missing. A cool thing someone did. Because we don’t want to be the show that’s just mad about everything. Hype Train Check. One specific AI claim, picked apart in five minutes. An interview. A conversation with someone (usually a colleague, sometimes a stranger) who knows something we don’t. We’re not selling AI. We’re not shorting AI. We use it, we teach next to it, and most days we’re confused about it. If that sounds like your life too, you’re in the right place. The opinions expressed represent our thinking at the time of recording and do not represent the views of our employer. Recorded live in Mac’s Bar in beautiful Lansing, MI. We don’t control the music, don’t sue please.

Episodes

  1. Aug 24

    Google Unleashes Gemini on Children

    Show Notes Episode Title: Google Unleashes Gemini on Children Recording date: August 21, 2026 Hosts: Danny Caballero & Devin Devin Silvia Quick Summary Danny reads Devin into the week’s biggest K-12 story: Gemini in Google Classroom dropping its 18+ floor and arriving (as a release note, with no PD and no research) as a tutoring system for students of all ages. They walk the adoption pattern (Houston ISD’s elementary AI pilot, North Carolina’s retreat), and the downstream enforcement economy it sets up. Then the hype train makes two stops: (1) Howard Gardner’s “kids can leave at ten” proposal, and (2) Anthropic’s text watermarking, which Danny reads as vendor positioning that starts the cheating-detection industry. And a cool thing: a UNSW team using an LLM to route students to existing lecture video instead of generating answers, deployed to ~900 students and benchmarked against a human instructor. Resources Google Workspace Updates, Aug 4: Gemini in Classroom available to K-12 and higher-ed students of all ages (web Aug 10, mobile Aug 17) https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2026/08/gemini-in-google-classroom-is-expanding-to-users-of-all-ages-with-contextualized-Gemini-starter-prompts-for-students.html?hl=en Education Week, Aug 18: Rick Hess interview with Howard Gardner, “How AI Will Force Us to ‘Rethink’ Education” https://www.edweek.org/technology/opinion-howard-gardner-how-ai-will-force-us-to-rethink-education/2026/08 Anthropic, Aug 14: “How Claude’s text watermarking works” https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-text-watermark 404 Media, Aug 18 (Jason Koebler): “Anthropic’s Text Watermarking Proves AI Companies Do Not Care at All About Writing” https://www.404media.co/anthropics-text-watermarking-proves-ai-companies-do-not-care-at-all-about-writing/ arXiv:2608.16131 — Tang, Vassar & Renzella (UNSW Sydney): lecture-video segment curation https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.16131 Houston Public Media, Aug 12: Houston ISD “Future 2” elementaries piloting TimeBack https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/education/2026/08/12/559265/hisd-back-to-school-mike-miles-special-education-ai-houston/ North Carolina budget: Khanmigo cut from $10M to $500k (from Ep 01 resources) https://goodhuemn.com/premium/stories/new-nc-budget-keeps-khanmigo-contract-but-slashes-funding-from-10-million-to-500000,165807

  2. Aug 6

    Why We Can't Have Nice Things (with Prof. Brian O'Shea)

    Show Notes Episode Title: Why Can’t We Have Nice Things? Release date: August 6, 2026 Hosts: Danny Caballero, Devin Silvia Guest: Brian O’Shea, Michigan State University Quick Summary Danny and Devin sit down with Brian O’Shea — computational astrophysicist and director of MSU’s Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research (ICER) — to talk about what it physically takes to run large-scale computing at a university: power, water, staff, and the things nobody budgets for. Then they turn the lens on the CSU–OpenAI deal from Episode 02 and ask the question that story never asks: what does $16.9 million actually buy, and what do you own when the contract ends? Related Episodes Episode 02: “Did California Spend Nearly $17 Million on Confusion?” Resources Mentioned or Related ICER — Michigan State University Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research: https://icer.msu.edu/ New York Times Magazine (June 1, 2026): “California’s Public Universities Went All in on A.I. Now They’re Tearing Themselves Apart” by Linda Kinstler — https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/magazine/ai-university-college-california.html Introducing ChatGPT Edu — OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-edu/ ASU and OpenAI expand collaboration — ASU Enterprise Technology: https://tech.asu.edu/features/asu-and-openai-expand-collaboration-scaling-ai Cal State Spent $16.9M on AI During a Faculty Layoff Crisis — AI Weekly: https://aiweekly.co/alerts/cal-state-spent-169m-on-ai-during-a-faculty-layoff-crisis Recorded: August 5, 2026

  3. Jul 24

    Did California Spend Nearly $17 Million on Confusion?

    Show Notes Episode Title: Did California Spend Nearly $17 Million on Confusion? Release date: July 24, 2026 Hosts: Devin Silvia, Danny Caballero Quick Summary In this episode, Devin guides Danny through Linda Kinstler’s New York Times Magazine article on the California State University system’s $16.9 million AI deal with OpenAI. They explore how AI is being used as a “solution” in the middle of a budget crisis, what that means for faculty labor and governance, and how it sharpens the question of what public education is for in an AI age. Resources Mentioned or Related New York Times Magazine (June 1, 2026): “California’s Public Universities Went All in on A.I. Now They’re Tearing Themselves Apart” by Linda Kinstler https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/magazine/ai-university-college-california.html Cal State Spent $16.9M on AI During a Faculty Layoff Crisis – AI Weekly https://aiweekly.co/alerts/cal-state-spent-169m-on-ai-during-a-faculty-layoff-crisis California University Chaos Caused by AI – The Patriot Post https://patriotpost.us/articles/128104-california-university-chaos-caused-by-ai-2026-06-05 California Universities’ $16.9M AI Experiment Raises … – LinkedIn post https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnbrondum_a-university-system-went-all-in-on-ai-now-activity-7467470936087130112-mKpM ASU and OpenAI expand collaboration, scaling AI to advance … – ASU Enterprise Technology https://tech.asu.edu/features/asu-and-openai-expand-collaboration-scaling-ai OpenAI, Arizona State University partner to expand AI in academia – Reuters https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-arizona-state-university-partner-expand-ai-academia-2024-01-18 Introducing ChatGPT Edu – OpenAI https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-edu Recorded: July 17, 2026

About

What Are We Even Doing is a podcast about AI from the people who have to deal with it on a Tuesday morning. We’re Danny Caballero and Devin Silvia, researchers and educators at Michigan State University. We teach computing to scientists and engineers. We’ve been doing it for over a decade. And like a lot of educators, we spend most of our time these days trying to figure out what AI is actually doing to our classrooms, our research, and our students’ lives. Every two weeks, we try to put out an episode with different parts: The AI education news. What happened in the last two weeks, and what the discourse is missing. A cool thing someone did. Because we don’t want to be the show that’s just mad about everything. Hype Train Check. One specific AI claim, picked apart in five minutes. An interview. A conversation with someone (usually a colleague, sometimes a stranger) who knows something we don’t. We’re not selling AI. We’re not shorting AI. We use it, we teach next to it, and most days we’re confused about it. If that sounds like your life too, you’re in the right place. The opinions expressed represent our thinking at the time of recording and do not represent the views of our employer. Recorded live in Mac’s Bar in beautiful Lansing, MI. We don’t control the music, don’t sue please.