Extra Credit

When the going gets tough, memories get buff! A study by some New York University brainiacs found that putting in more cognitive effort (a.k.a. trying harder) really can pump up the power of your working memory. Just like how our muscles bulk up with more physical effort, our brains get better at storing info when we mentally flex those neurons. The subheading is great, The difficulty is what makes things great.

Games have been charming us since ancient times, and now they've stealthily taken over everything from online dating to social media and even stock markets. We've moved way beyond tic-tac-toe, today game design influences how we swipe right, scroll through feeds, and invest our hard-earned cash. By using scoring systems and rewards, game designers can guide our behaviors without us even realizing it, making us all unknowing participants in their grand design.

Researchers from ETS (the organizations that administers the SAT) tested GPT-4o grading on over 13,000 student essays and found it biased against Asian American students, deducting more points compared to human graders. The AI, unknowingly, served lower scores to Asian Americans. They couldn't figure out why this AI was harsher. Keep this in mind when AI is assessing student work.