Throughout my career, I have worked closely with my colleagues in Silicon Valley. Through these interactions, there are always new ideas, and the level of confidence in predictions will usually start to be strong and will only become stronger. This time it feels different. Last week, last week of visiting Silicon Valley, I heard the following repeatedly as a preface to the prediction, and I can’t say that I’ve heard it before when interacting with my most offensive colleagues: “I might be wrong, but…”
A few innocent words, but a hedge of embellishment, even the most confident of us know that the AI era is Beautiful, beautiful Complex.
I attended the annual AI+ Education Summit 2025 hosted by the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Institute (HAI) and Stanford University Learning Accelerator. This topic – humane-centric AI for thriving learning ecosystems – is both urgent and inspiring discussion. AI is not only on the horizon; it is actively reshaping the education landscape. Our responsibility is to ensure that this transformation enhances human potential, not reduces it.
The Summit convened leading researchers, educators and policy makers to explore the role of AI in personalized learning, strengthening educators and bridging the educational gap. The speed of change is astounding – On the anniversary, half of students use AI tools at least in and out of the classroom. Institutions must act immediately to shape the role of AI in education intentionally rather than reactively.
The power of collective action in higher education
One of the key messages of the summit is that no institution, company, innovator or researcher can only deal with this challenge. Coordinated efforts in higher education are crucial to ensure that AI serves students, faculty and society in an equitable and effective way.
At the University of Michigan, we have witnessed first-hand how teacher innovators try to generate AI to enhance teaching and learning. Our recent call for recommendations at the Center for Academic Innovation has led to a series of AI-enhanced teaching projects aimed at exploring the interdisciplinary AI potential from medical education to humanities. These projects show not only how AI can enrich the classroom experience, but also how to deepen engagement, personalize learning and expand human creativity. We are helping teachers transform emerging technologies into meaningful applications to create impactful learning experiences on campus and beyond.
Organizations such as UM’s Center for Academic Innovation and Stanford’s HAI and Stanford’s Learning Accelerator play a vital role in leading this effort – through experimentation, research and convening communities of practice. Without space to explore the potential potential of AI, without research to study its effectiveness, and without efforts convening, the future of AI in education will be innovated by chance rather than intentionally.
Michigan’s work is part of a wider movement. Throughout higher education, institutions are launching AI-driven initiatives to explore the role of AI in teaching, learning, and research. One example is the California State University system, which recently announced a partnership with Openai to explore the potential of AI on its 23 campuses. Like many other programs, this initiative highlights the need for efforts to develop responsible and scalable AI solutions.
These efforts—with assisted leadership of Michigan experiments, such as CSU’s massive systems program, and Stanford’s AI+ Education Summit, global events illuminate a variety of approaches to AI in education. In particular, the Stanford University summit highlighted the experiments of outstanding faculty leadership, exploring the role of AI in enhancing learning, promoting creativity, and responding to the challenges of equitable access technology. These initiatives strengthen the importance of institutional collaboration in shaping the future of AI education. But the biggest question remains: How do we shape the role of AI in education to serve our preferred future rather than responding to the imposed future?
5 key points of AI+Education Summit
- AI is changing education, but its role must be purposeful.
AI has reshape the way students learn and educators teach. We must ensure that AI acts as a tool for augmentation rather than automation. How can we avoid optimizing automation instead of optimizing AI to enhance human creativity, problem-solving and collaboration?
- Teachers’ innovation is leading the way and has received institutional support.
Some of the most eye-catching AI applications that emerged in teacher-led experiments. Universities must invest in teacher training to create responsible innovation conditions, provide resources for experiments, and develop ethical frameworks that support AI integration, while prioritizing student learning. We need to understand who works for what is and be ready to invest further in the most influential efforts.
- Artificial intelligence ethics and governance must be at the forefront.
The potential of artificial intelligence to expand bias and aggravate inequality has been well documented. Institutions must focus on governance, transparency and bias mitigation to ensure AI benefits all learners. Without clear organizational leadership, regulations will fill the gap. Can we establish a governance framework that protects learners and helps them thrive while promoting innovation and thriving global competitiveness and security?
- Artificial intelligence literacy is urgent, but we lack consensus on what it means.
The general consensus is that students, educators and institutions need to accelerate AI literacy. However, the content that constitutes AI literacy is not yet clear. Should AI literacy be about technical level? Moral responsibility? Practical application? Probably all of the above – but the correct balance is elusive. I might be wrong, but if we don’t actively shape this problem now, we may find that AI literacy is defined for us in ways that don’t match our values. The definitions vary, but we need a broad consensus that we need anyone to gain access to AI literacy and to gain AI literacy soon.
- We need a shared vision of artificial intelligence in education.
The AI+ Education Summit made it clear that the impact of AI should be shaped by the collective choice of educators, institutions and policy makers. Without a shared vision, the future will be determined only by market forces. The speakers at the conference described the future they wanted to see: designed for the widest range of learners to support human thriving, strengthen the fundamental relationship between teachers and students, and work for everyone.
Organizations have taken a very different approach to AI – some choose to ban it, limiting its use until clearer guidelines emerge, while others choose to embrace it, thus facilitating a culture of experimentation and innovation. Others decided to take a wait and see, uncertain about how AI will eventually shape higher education. Perhaps all of these strategies have their advantages. Maybe in a few years we will look back and realize that the most effective method is something we haven’t considered yet. I might be wrong, but that’s why we need a variety of perspectives to shape this conversation right now.
Problems with our growing AI education community
When institutions embrace AI, we should ask ourselves:
- How do we ensure that AI enhances equity and access rather than strengthens existing gaps?
- How do we ensure that AI supports human creativity and critical thinking, rather than replace them?
- How do we balance the experiment with the need to maintain institutional policies for students and educators?
- What collaboration models (between institutions, industries and policy makers) can accelerate AI adoption in higher education?
- How can institutions accelerate trust in learners and teachers with the adoption of AI?
- What is the booming, enhanced learning ecosystem like over the past five years? How do we get there?
The AI+ Education Summit emphasizes that we are not passive observers of AI’s impact on education, we are participants in the active participants shaping their trajectories. This work takes place in Stanford University in Michigan, CSU, and the wider community of higher education, with increasing recognition that AI is not only another technology for convergence, but also a transformative force that requires intention, collaboration, and vision.
But if we simply let students uninstall critical thinking easily, it would be a collective failure. Artificial intelligence must never be a shortcut to undermining the cognitive skills we develop among our learners and citizens.
It’s time to bring institutions and individuals together to share knowledge and create a future for our preference for AI in education. We don’t have all the answers, and some of the best ideas today may be incomplete or even misleading. I feel that there is very little time to passively observe. The role of AI in education will be defined by us or for us. Let’s build a future we prefer – because if you don’t, well…I might be wrong, but I doubt we’ll like this option.
