I recently joined, for the second time, the Plexuss Presidential Podcast for a conversation about higher education, AI, design, entrepreneurship, and the future of work. The conversation kept returning to one basic question: What is higher education for now?
AI is not just a technology question. It is a design question, a workforce question, an ethics question, an environmental question, and a civic question. The digital world has a physical footprint. Data centers, energy use, robotics, construction automation, infrastructure, and the future of cities are all part of the same conversation. So the question is not simply whether AI will make us more efficient. The better question is: what kind of world are we building with it?