AI-powered tools like Google Lens pose cheating challenge for CA classrooms

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First unveiled in 2017, Google Lens enables users of Google devices and software to look up physical objects, translate text and conduct visual searches within seconds. But with the proliferation of artificial intelligence, its use inside the classroom is posing a challenge among teachers and potentially harming students’ ability to learn effectively.

As CalMatters’ Carolyn Jones explains, millions of California’s 5.8 million K-12 students use Google laptops known as Chromebooks. AI-powered tools such as Lens have made it easier for students to cheat on digital tests by allowing them to highlight text on their laptops and having Lens spit out near-instant explanations or interpretations.

Dustin Stevenson, a high school English teacher at the Los Angeles Unified School District, said he noticed students in his class, who were previously struggling throughout the semester, were suddenly acing tests following the latest update to Lens. 

For William Heuisler, a high school ethnic studies teacher in L.A., the distractions on learning posed by Chromebooks got to the point where he had to ditch technology altogether in his classroom and return to pencil and paper.

• Heuisler: “Can you get by in life not knowing how to write, how to express yourself? I don’t know, but I hope not.”

Research backs Heuisler’s concerns: A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that students who use AI for help writing essays had 55% less cognitive activity than those who didn’t.

In the meantime, L.A. Unified has decided to keep Lens on its student laptops, according to a district spokesperson. It has placed some guardrails, however, including allowing students access to the tool after they completed a lesson on digital literacy. 

Read more here.

An Oregon district court judge sided with California on Friday, issuing a permanent injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s deployment of state National Guard troops to Portland, Ore., including California’s.

The decision wraps up a three-day trial between the Trump administration against California, Oregon and the city of Portland.

In a sprawling 106-page ruling, federal judge Karin Immergut, a Trump-appointee, pointed to evidence that the violence by protesters outside a federal immigration detention facility in Portland didn’t rise to a level that threatened the federal government or prevented its operations. She also wrote that local police did their jobs in quelling any unrest and questioned the reliability of the federal government’s claims that protesters severely damaged the federal facility or breached it. 

• The ruling: “There is no evidence that the protesters outside the Portland ICE building acted with a purpose to overtake an instrumentality of government by unlawful or antidemocratic means. … Finally, it is telling that all of Defendants’ evidence of danger predates July 5 — more than two months prior to the President’s federalization of the National Guard.”

Immergut’s ruling follows her temporary block that sided with California and Oregon last month. This is the second time a district judge sided with California against Trump’s use of the military after a trial. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing an emergency appeal by the Trump administration over its sending of National Guard troops in Illinois, which remains temporarily blocked by lower courts. Its ruling may have national implications over how courts consider future disputed troop deployments. 

Ten months after the Palisades Fire ripped through L.A. County and killed 12 people, Will Rogers State Historic Park finally reopened Saturday, albeit partially, after remaining off-limits since the devastating wildfire broke out.

Members of the public can again access about 4.2 miles of trails and visit the park’s main lawn and picnic area, returning precious parkland to a region with a limited supply of green space. Will Rogers has also opened up its equestrian operations, though on a smaller scale as restorations continue. Its remaining 4.8 miles of trails are still closed for repair.

The Jan. 7 Palisades wildfire burned about 8,000 acres of state parks land, including Will Rogers’ famed ranch house, park facilities and hundreds of historic trees located in the Santa Monica Mountains. 

The park’s reopening is “cathartic for both park staff and visitors,” said Noa Khalili, the acting senior environmental scientist of the state parks’ Angeles district who helped save historic artifacts from the ranch house.

• Khalili: “(The fire) is traumatic to those of us who work here in this beautiful place. And so the process of repair and restoration is healing.”

From CalMatters’ climate reporter Alejandro Lazo and environmental justice reporter Alejandra Reyes-Velarde:

As the United Nations Climate Change Conference begins, California officials are the highest profile American delegation this week in Belém, Brazil. Though the Trump administration has abandoned the Paris climate agreement and won’t send officials to the talks, subnational governments like California can’t sit in at the negotiations. But representing the world’s fourth largest economy, Gov. Gavin Newsom will burnish the state’s reputation — and his own — for clean-energy policy and regional agreements. 

Scholars say the state’s presence in Belém does carry some weight. 

• David G. Victor, UC San Diego climate policy professor: “If we weren’t doing things like this, then the rest of the world would be even more puzzled as to what’s going on inside the United States. The symbolic value of showing that the United States has not completely abandoned climate and clean energy … is pretty important for the rest of the world, but there’s not a huge caloric value to it.”

The University of California dodged what could have been one of the biggest labor strikes in its history, after reaching a tentative agreement on Saturday with the University Professional and Technical Employees labor group. 

The union represents 21,000 health care professionals, technical and research support professionals. After 17 months of negotiations, it threatened a two-day walkout on Nov. 17 that included other allied unions. The statewide strike was expected to total more than 80,000 workers, including health care workers and nurses at five medical centers — crippling the university system’s health and research operations.

The tentative agreement includes wage increases, caps on health care premium increases and “improvements in work-life balance, career progression, and job security,” according to UPTE.