Welcome to our latest news section, when we try to provide a quick digest of the AI news that could affect the Higher Education sector.
- A Researcher’s Nightmare – Snoop and ScoopOver the past month, two stories have emerged about AI companies publishing discoveries in the sciences. In both cases, academic researchers have claimed that these discoveries closely resemble their own unpublished work and that they had been actively using AI models as part of their research. This has led to suggestions that the AI models… Read more: A Researcher’s Nightmare – Snoop and Scoop
- Durham and Microsoft partnership to support AI skills and future opportunitiesDurham have announced an exciting partnership with Microsoft to help shape the future of AI skills, education, and opportunity. The collaboration was announced at London Tech Week 2026 by Darren Hardman, Corporate Vice President & CEO, Microsoft UK and Ireland, as part of wider discussions on how artificial intelligence is transforming the future of work across the… Read more: Durham and Microsoft partnership to support AI skills and future opportunities
- Using AI for marking – Is it any good?An interesting report came out form the University of Cambridge last week examining how accurate several frontier models were when they were asked to grade undergraduate essays from across three different institutions (Cambridge , Manchester Met, and Nottingham). The results were mixed, with the AI successfully classified Cambridge essays into the correct UK degree classification… Read more: Using AI for marking – Is it any good?
- AI cracks Erdős maths problemsOver the past week, we have seen separate AI solve a number of previously unsolved Erdős problems. Paul Erdős was a famous Hungarian mathematician who was well known for his wide-ranging interest in a large number of mathematical fields, and his travels across the world, where he would just turn up on the doorsteps of… Read more: AI cracks Erdős maths problems
- AI agents – What are they all aboutAI agents are here and one question that has been coming up in our workshops is “What are they?”, the ever brilliant Professor Hannah Fry has produced this video looking at AI agents.