Campus: Pros and cons of AI in higher education

How should universities manage the rapid uptake of artificial intelligence across all aspects of higher education? We talk to three experts about AI’s impact on teaching, governance and the environment. 

These interviews – with a researcher, a teaching expert and a pro vice-chancellor for AI – share practical advice, break down key considerations, and offer reasons for vigilance and optimism. 

We talk to:

• Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a cooperating faculty member in the computer science and engineering department at the University of California, Riverside, whose article “Making AI less ‘thirsty’: uncovering and addressing the secret water footprint of AI models”, co-written with Pengfei Li and Jianyi Yang, also from UC Riverside, and Mohammad A. Islam of UT Arlington, has drawn attention to water consumption of AI data centres
• José Bowen, an author and academic who co-wrote Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) 
• Shushma Patel, pro vice-chancellor for artificial intelligence at De Montfort University in the UK. 

For more Campus resources on this topic, see our spotlight guide Bringing GenAI into university teaching.