Axios C-Suite: A new college course proposal, "Living AI"
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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Stock: Getty Images
I met with faculty and the AI task force at Furman University and got a smart, provocative question: What do I wish liberal arts colleges taught students about AI to prep them to work for us?
- In other words, what do CEOs want and need based on the known-knowns of AI capabilities today and our evolving expectations?
My dream: Every college student, from Day 1, takes a course every semester called "Living AI." It's constantly updated — how to use the newest models and how to grapple with their ethical, philosophical and practical consequences.
It fits into a three-track approach:
1. Think without it. In most classrooms, greatly limit or ban AI. Courses built to deepen and widen thinking should force students to read, reason and write on their own. We need thinkers and problem-solvers.
- In an AI-saturated world, original thinking becomes your differentiator. You can't steer or judge AI's output if you don't know anything about the world yourself.
2. Work with it. Every major should graduate students with real expertise in using AI for that specific field.
- A marketing grad should run AI like a pro for marketing. Same for biology, finance, history, nursing. This means faculty teaching field-specific application, not just the generic tutorial.
3. Live with it. That's the Living AI course concept for everyone.
- Hire realists. Find clear-thinking, practical teachers who use and track the models and capabilities, not doomers or cheerleaders. People who marvel at its new capabilities, then clinically assess the real-world impact.
- Keep it alive. This can't be a static course. The models change constantly, and capabilities grow exponentially. So the "Living" part is vital: treat it like an ever-evolving topic. Try to match the pace of the class with the pace of tech, which is hard but doable.
- Teach beyond the tech. These students will face wild philosophical and ethical questions: What is consciousness? Can a machine be a friend? What counts as your own work? Who is responsible when an AI agent screws up? Use each week's AI news to tee up those debates.
- Treat it as living history. No one gets to sit this one out. This is our electricity moment. It's a generational challenge and opportunity. The course should push students to think about shaping AI to benefit society, not just themselves.
Worth a read: The New York Times dug into research on students' brains on AI.
- This, buried midway through the story, should be stamped on every classroom wall: "These studies so far agree: Artificial intelligence is affecting how people, especially the young, learn and remember. Whether we will be dumber as a result might depend on how — not if — we use A.I."
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