AI and higher ed, continued
Hollis Robbins on an AI Czar for a university; The Cosmos Institute co-runs a seminar
The AI advisor builds the institutional conditions under which the university will learn how to use AI productively in service of the institutional mission: where it helps, where it fails, what kinds of evidence it produces, what kinds of labor it displaces or creates, what kinds of errors it makes, and when it should not be used at all. The role is responsible for building the infrastructure through which operational AI knowledge develops and circulates across the whole university: academic affairs, research, the medical enterprise, the library system, enrollment management, student affairs, administration, and finance.
I doubt that one person can handle all of these roles. The critical fact about AI is that the models are evolving rapidly. I think that what I call a “keeper-upper” is a full-time job. That is, someone who can sort through the latest developments to find out what deserves the attention of faculty and students.
Her “czar” sounds like a job for someone to adapt a university to AI as it exists. I worry that this is not the solution. The last sentence of her job description is a nod in the appropriate direction.
The role must be designed to extend to each frontier as it reaches the institution.
I just cannot see any one person or department empowering universities to deal with AI. Either the legacy structure is strong enough to survive the AI revolution pretty much intact, or else the whole concept of a university needs to be torn down and rebuilt. As you might guess, I am in the latter camp.
two questions that anyone building an educational institution has to answer:
The first question is about purpose. Do you focus on specific, trainable skills, or on a broader, if more intangible formation, which includes the development of judgment, attention, and moral seriousness?
The second question is about technology. Do you build AI into the core of the educational experience or keep it out because the difficulty is where the learning happens?
This framework yields four quadrants. In one quadrant, there is skills-focused training and very encouraging of AI. In the opposite quadrant they put St. John’s College, betting that classical education without AI will build character and that this will be the key human asset in the future. A third quadrant tries to keep the core curriculum and teaching method intact, while adding AI in an ancillary way. The final quadrant tries to split in two: an AI-focused curriculum and a classical, AI-free curriculum. The institute puts UATX into this last category.
The Institute ran a seminar in conjunction with the Liberty Fund, on the campus of UATX. The readings for the seminar are at the link. One of their choices was from substacker Henrik Karlsson.
His argument is sobering: AI tutors will be held back by culture, rather than technology. Motivated learners embedded in high-growth communities will use AI to accelerate, while everyone else will use it to avoid difficulty. The real challenge will be building strong cultural norms against taking the path of least resistance.
I was not a participant in the seminar. No doubt I would have found it highly stimulating.
My short take is that character matters. That is how I take the Karlsson quote. But do you necessarily build character the St. John’s way, by giving out a large does of classical education? To me, scholarly character is a combination of intense curiosity and willingness to work as hard as it takes to satisfy that curiosity. Maybe there is a correlation between that and doing well in the classics, but I do not think that the relationship is causal.
How do you build scholarly character. I don’t believe in using the extrinsic motivators, such as grades or future employment prospects. I think it means an environment in which enough faculty and students model scholarly character that the students with scholarly character select in and those without it select out.
substacks referenced above: @
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This is a Claude current in your piece:
The deeper question the framework raises — and nobody fully answers — is whether scholarly character is buildable at all through institutional design, or whether institutions can only select for it and then not destroy it. That's a more pessimistic but possibly more accurate view.
I think selection bias strongly affects who wants (and is willing to do the work for) a classical education. What is selected for? In my experience with St. John’s students I would say: an animus toward modernity often informed by strong religious views. I would also say that those who want to read the old books closely (and uncritically) are also looking for an authority to follow. Add Straussian tendencies (recall Leo Strauss spent his last years at St. John’s) and you are selecting for people with deep doubts about modernity and a desire to return to the medieval and ancient worlds. It’s hard to imagine attitudes less apt for the next century. Look for people that love Popper not Plato.