dean - suprlab

Curiosity in the Age of AI: Lessons from Anima Anandkumar

In a recent Business Insider interview, Caltech professor and former Nvidia/Amazon AI leader Anima Anandkumar emphasized the irreplaceable value of human curiosity in the AI era. While AI can generate new ideas, Anandkumar points out that practical experimentation, validation, and discovery still rely on human initiative — and often come

AI In Education

The Gender Gap in AI Trust: A Wake-Up Call for Education

A new Deloitte report highlights a growing gender trust gap in the use of generative AI in Australian workplaces. According to The Australian, only 50% of women report trusting and using generative AI, compared to 70% of men. The reasons behind this disparity are sobering. Women are significantly more likely

Opinion Featured

Is AI Making Us Dumber? A Cautionary Reflection

We live in an era of unprecedented access to tools that can extend our thinking, creativity, and problem-solving — but are they also quietly eroding the very skills we once prized? Recent discussions, like the excellent ColdFusion podcast, have reignited a vital question: Is AI making us dumber? The answer isn’

Project Journal

Keeping It Alive: Setting Up Uptime Kuma to Monitor My Self-Hosted Stack

Since moving most of my personal tools and services to a self-hosted setup, I needed a simple way to check if everything was still running — without relying on external services like Pingdom or UptimeRobot. Enter Uptime Kuma, a sleek, open-source monitoring dashboard I now run locally to keep an eye

Project Journal

Upgrading Blackbox's Wi-Fi: Installing the Intel AX200 on Debian

Today I upgraded the internal Wi-Fi card on Blackbox (my Lenovo M710q Tiny running Debian) to an Intel AX200NGW. The journey wasn’t exactly plug-and-play — but we got there, and now Blackbox is fully dual-network capable. Here’s the full rundown, problems included. Hardware install The M710q had an old

Opinion

AI and the New Age of Academic Integrity: Why Cheating Isn’t the Real Issue

In classrooms around Australia and across the world, teachers and lecturers are grappling with a problem that feels both new and strangely familiar: cheating. But this time, it isn’t a matter of copying from a friend’s assignment or sneaking notes into an exam. It’s AI — tools like

Resources

Student Resources

Here are some trusted tools, guides, and resources to help you study smarter, research better, and build skills for the future. 🧠 Study Smarter, Not Harder * Active Recall and Spaced Repetition: A Beginner’s Guide – Learn how to actually remember what you study. * Cornell Note-Taking System – An easy, effective way to

AI In Education

Brisbane Catholic Education Launches AI Chatbot with Religious Framework

Published: April 2025 Summary Brisbane Catholic Education has rolled out a Microsoft-designed AI chatbot across 146 schools to assist teachers with tasks like lesson planning, administrative work, and grading. Uniquely, the chatbot is grounded in Catholic teachings, ensuring that AI-generated content aligns with the schools' religious values. This initiative

AI In Education

China's Ambitious Plan to Integrate AI Across Its Educational System

Published: April 2025 Summary China has announced a sweeping reform initiative to integrate artificial intelligence across all levels of its education system. The plan includes updating curricula, developing AI-specific textbooks, training teachers in AI literacy, and encouraging innovation through AI-driven methodologies. The government views this move as essential for fostering

AI In Education

University of Sydney Implements 'Two-Lane' Assessment Strategy for AI Use

Published: April 2025 Summary The University of Sydney is introducing a new "two-lane" policy for assessments involving AI. Under this approach, the use of AI tools like ChatGPT is banned in supervised, in-person exams, but permitted for take-home assignments where students are expected to disclose their AI usage.

AI In Education

Draft U.S. Executive Order Proposes Integrating AI into K-12 Education

Published: April 2025 Summary A draft executive order from the Trump administration outlines plans to integrate artificial intelligence into K-12 education across the United States. The proposal encourages promoting AI literacy among students, partnering with private and academic institutions, and incorporating AI-related content into teacher training and classroom activities. A

AI In Education

AI Tools are Rapidly Changing How Teachers Plan Lessons

Published: April 2025 Summary AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and MagicSchool.ai are becoming increasingly common in teachers’ lesson planning workflows. These platforms can help generate worksheets, adapt tasks to different learning levels, and offer creative suggestions based on curriculum standards. While AI is not a replacement for professional expertise,

Resources

AI Tools & Resources for Educators

This is a curated collection of AI tools, courses, and resources designed to support teachers exploring the integration of artificial intelligence in education. Whether you're just starting out or looking to deepen your understanding, these links offer practical and reliable starting points. 🛠 AI Tools for Teachers * ChatGPT (OpenAI)

Project Journal

Setting up Hermes Search with a FastAPI Backend

After getting my ThinkCentre (“blackbox”) stable, I wanted to set up a search tool that lets my local LLMs fetch real-time web results. This post documents the working config I used to connect Hermes 2/3 to a custom FastAPI tool, backed by SearxNG. 🔧 What We Used: * Hermes model via

Project Journal

Choosing LLM models for Blackbox

When we started setting up Blackbox, our self-hosted AI workstation, one of the biggest questions was: Which local language models (LLMs) should we run? With so many models available — from tiny 1B parameter experiments to heavyweight 70B giants — the challenge was finding a perfect fit: * Fast enough for everyday use

Project Journal

Setting Up Open WebUI + Ollama on CPU

A streamlined setup for local LLM interaction via a web interface. Why We Did It 🖥️ After experimenting with local model serving, we needed a lightweight, fast web interface to interact with LLMs running directly on CPU — no GPU acceleration. The goals were: * Keep it simple * Use existing hardware (Blackbox 🖤) * Make

Project Journal

Meet Blackbox: The Heart of My AI Playground

Welcome to my blog — a blend of thoughts, experiments, and digital tinkering. I thought I’d kick things off by introducing Blackbox, the machine that made all of this possible. 🛠️ The Origin Story Blackbox is a Lenovo ThinkCentre M710q that I picked up secondhand. I was looking for something compact,