Inside Higher Ed I have had a long tenure of teaching in higher education, beginning in 1972 at the instructor level at the University of Illinois Urbana, continuing through spring semester 2022 as a full professor and associate vice chancellor at the University of Illinois Springfield. That is one half of a century in the faculty ranks. My field of communication technologies has been one of rapid, society-altering change. The thousands of students I engaged over those years faced rapid change in careers that shifted from analog reel-to-reel audio tape to digital video, from over-the-air broadcasting to virtual and augmented reality, and from Photoshop to AI-generated videos. Professionally, I am familiar with dealing with change. Yet, the speed of change in the recent subset of AI-enhanced technologies outpaces the speed of changes in communications fields over the past half century by light-years. Nevertheless, that background of five decades of closely following and teaching communication technologies has made me acutely sensitive to the need to engage and prepare students for those changes through deep discussions probing the advanced technologies enabling change, but also the social and societal implications that surround those advances in the “real” world. There has been a nonstop evolution of technologies. For example, from manual typewriters in the 1950s to the IBM Selectric in the 1960s, to personal computers in the 1970s such as the IBM PC/XT to the ubiquitous smartphones emerging in the 1990s. Each of these huge steps in capabilities and flexibilities came about in years. Now, however, AI technologies are improving far more rapidly. Google Gemini reports that new versions of the three frontier models of AI by Google, OpenAI and Anthropic average every one to two months: Release Cadence Breakdown OpenAI Average Gap: ~32 to 45 days Details: Shifting rapidly from older generational gaps