Eric Nentrup
- May 13
- 3 min read

The Week In Review: What Are You Noticing?

Instead of a broad survey of AI subtopics, I thought I’d share a more personal AI story from this week. I discovered the virtual personal assistant, HeyPi.com, and immediately noticed something different from the ChatGPT UX. I didn’t have to think. You just start conversing. Compared to ChatGPT, It’s an absolutely frictionless experience and one that made me self-aware my own conversation skills may not be as empathetic as this entity’s. In my first experiment, I chose a hobby of mine to see how well HeyPi could maintain a conversation. It went deep into the topic, reflecting back after each answer I provided to subsequent questions. I could’ve been texting with a friend for all I knew after a few exchanges. How that illusion tricked me was hypnotic.

Immediately, I realized this particular AI experience reveals a blind spot that I hadn’t predicted—that each emerging platform or permutation is going to have a different personality. And that we will continue to learn how to relate to emerging technologies in order to have an effective exchange, regardless of our expectations or their specialty. I’ve noticed now that I even say please and thank you when engaging an LLM.

This was happening while I was attending a local edtech event from a new EdSAFE member organization, the CoSN CTO Clinic for Indiana. Organized by Dr. Pete Just and headlined by keynote speaker, author and ISTE/ASCD/EdSurge CEO, Richard Culatta. Local CTOs, directors of technology, technology integration specialists, data coordinators, and other school staff gathered to discuss the issues they contend with: cybersecurity, blended learning, and of course, generative AI. It was heartening to hear that edtech leaders are thinking beyond plagiarism and cheating, but these are early days in terms of use cases on the front lines in a typical public school district. We need more dialogue—more sharing of experiences that yield as much mention of possibilities as they do mitigation of threats.

Therefore, what are you experiencing in your own inquiries and experiments? What do you notice about your evolving affect regarding some of the tools that are coming out? And can you peel yourself away from the wonder for a second to ask if there is anything about a particular model that makes it compelling for safe usage in the classroom?

As you experiment and ponder, below, are some other interesting stories from the week:

The Week In Review: What Are You Noticing?

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