What is Meta's Muse?

A 130-page report lands in your inbox with a buried deadline, a half-million-dollar commitment, and one sentence that quietly rewrites policy, and your AI summary mentions none of it. In this episode, host Emily Laird explains why asking AI to make documents shorter is the wrong assignment, and how to interrogate them instead: commitment tables, version comparisons, skeptical-evaluator prompts, and the hunt for what isn’t there. She also breaks down evidence grounding and why no important claim should leave the chat without a page number attached. Confident, beautifully formatted, and occasionally wrong is not the standard you want to bring into a budget meeting. 🎯 JOIN THE AI WEEKLY MEETUPS https://www.uwstout.edu/ai-weekly-meetup

Anthropic now lets Claude hang up on abusive users, and Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman warns that training a model to wonder about its own feelings creates nothing more than an expensive echo. In this episode, host Emily Laird cuts through the headlines to explain what a “moral patient” actually is, why a cartoon sheep selling checking accounts proves Suleyman’s point, and why the off switch was never up for debate. The real fight is about vocabulary, training, and two companies planting brand flags on a question science hasn’t answered. You’ll walk away with practical habits for working with chatbots, from swapping insults for precise feedback to reading every AI self-report as output, not testimony. 🎯 JOIN THE AI WEEKLY MEETUPS https://www.uwstout.edu/ai-weekly-meetup

If you are still explaining your job, your project, and your audience to AI every time you open a new chat, host Emily Laird has one question: why? This episode makes the case for AI workspaces (ChatGPT Projects, Claude Projects, Copilot Notebooks) where your files, standards, and past decisions live permanently, so your prompts can describe today’s task instead of rebuilding the entire universe around it. Expect practical advice on curating files, keeping a “Current State” document, and moving important conclusions out of chats, plus a plain-English take on RAG. There is also a catch: persistent context can make AI inherit your assumptions, so knowing when to start fresh matters just as much. 🎯 JOIN THE AI WEEKLY MEETUPS https://www.uwstout.edu/ai-weekly-meetup

MCP, the Model Context Protocol, became the universal plug for AI this year, backed by Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon and connecting assistants to the apps you actually use. The catch: your AI reads every connector’s tool descriptions, you don’t, and one poisoned line can turn an obedient assistant into a quiet leak. In this episode, host Emily Laird explains how MCP works, why tool poisoning and rug pulls have the NSA and Microsoft paying attention, and seven practical habits for connecting AI without handing out spare keys. Same plug, wildly different behavior, so know who’s holding the keys. 🎯 JOIN THE AI WEEKLY MEETUPS https://www.uwstout.edu/ai-weekly-meetup

Thursday, January 8, 2026 9:28 AM Most people use generative AI like a search bar, type two vague words into the box, and then blame the model when it hands back beige, forgettable text. In this episode, host Emily Laird makes the case for treating AI like a colleague who needs a real assignment: a named deliverable, the right source material, and a clear picture of what finished looks like. She breaks down the Goal, Context, Source, Expectations framework, explains grounding (and how it prevents administrative fan fiction), and looks at 2026 research suggesting generic prompt advice can actually slow people down. The real upgrade isn't prompt wizardry: it's learning to write a clear assignment. 🎯 JOIN THE AI WEEKLY MEETUPS https://www.uwstout.edu/ai-weekly-meetup