06/10/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 06/11/2025 23:58
Is artificial intelligence (AI) a threat to academic integrity or a boon for higher education? We talked to Kim Polese-chair of CrowdSmart (an AI company focused on improving human decision making), cofounder of Common Good AI (a nonprofit focused on improving civic engagement), and member of PPIC's Statewide Leadership Council-to get her perspective.
Tell us a bit about your involvement with AI.
I have a deep background in AI, starting when I was a 10-year-old growing up in Berkeley. My mom would drop my best friend and me off for afternoons at the Lawrence Hall of Science, and there was this big computer in the basement running a program called ELIZA, one of the first demonstrations of natural language processing. We would have conversations, and it was easy to drive Eliza into logical dead ends. But the fact that a computer could act like a human . . . this was a revolutionary breakthrough at the time. So that set me on a path of really focusing on computer science.
I got my first job at the first AI company to go public, back in the eighties. After building multiple tech companies over the following decades, I cofounded an AI company called CrowdSmart in 2015. We are integrating human collective intelligence with AI to improve the decision-making and problem solving of real-live humans. More recently, I cofounded Common Good AI, a dot-org focused on democracy and civic engagement..
What most excites you-and concerns you-about the use of AI in higher education?
The combination of humans and AI is really where the greatest potential lies. AI can actually be a tutor. It can be a coach, it can be a mentor, it can be a teammate. And we can multiply exponentially the number of instructors, tutors, coaches, and mentors with AI.
I know there's a lot of concern in higher education about AI being a source of cheating or replacing the thinking or the work that students do. But we can't stop students from using it. In fact, we shouldn't want to, because these are the tools they're going to be using in the workplace. They need to learn how to use AI in ways that increase their critical thinking, their creative capacity, and their ability to work with other people.
I do have concerns about letting these tools get hijacked or not paying attention to the detrimental impact they could have. I am very concerned about runaway use, and also about this intoxication with AI. The idea that oh, we can just kind of let AI figure it out, or we won't need to have jobs in the future, because we'll just have universal basic income, and AI will do everything.
We can certainly guide responsible use of AI, like we've done with other technologies. It's not easy to create policies that will be both practical and effective. But again, we have no choice. We have to do that hard work. I've been involved for several years with an organization called Technet, and also with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Part of our mission is working with policymakers to create, for example, a federal AI bill that could reduce implementation complexity compared to the patchwork of state regulations that is starting to emerge.
What role do you think AI has in preparing students, regardless of age, for jobs and careers?
I teach a class in entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley, and we use AI in an experimental way. I've been teaching this class for seven years. It's very much about learning how to talk to humans and testing your hypotheses. If you're launching a product or building a company or doing really anything in life, you need to figure out whether your idea is something the world needs and wants.
But launching a successful company at the end of the semester is not the ultimate goal of the course. It's really about learning how to listen and then synthesize what you've heard and not being overwhelmed by getting it wrong. Many students have been taught that it's important to get the right answers and follow all of the steps. But that's not the world that they're going into.
It's important to use AI to challenge and interrogate our thinking, our ideas, our conjectures-to learn how to use the tools more effectively than just asking a question and getting an answer. There is a whole line of instruction around how to create effective prompts that dive into the topic. It's also important to design coursework that is more experiential, more focused on critical thinking and analysis.
The reality is that the jobs of tomorrow are not going to be the same as the jobs of today, and we don't know what these jobs are going to be. This is why AI is crucial for equity of access to high-quality higher education.
AI's rapid evolution can overwhelm even the most strategic leaders. Do you have any advice for college/university executives about how best to deploy and manage the use of AI?
First, make sure that there's human oversight. Not just by instructors but also by students. Instead of treating students as receptacles of what the AI is teaching them, we need to ensure that they see themselves as guiding the AI.
Second, provide clear guidelines. It's important to be transparent about how, where, why you're using AI, and share this with the student body, the instructors, everyone.
Third, foster exploration. It's critical for instructors to experiment and learn how to use these tools, instead of being afraid or sitting back waiting for it to happen. This requires proactive initiatives that bring everyone along.
Fourth, ensure equitable access. AI can be a powerful tool in making high-quality, personalized education accessible to students regardless of their background or location. This should start early in K-12 education, and higher education must be a key partner.
I believe California's public universities and colleges can be at the forefront in deploying AI to prepare students for jobs now and into the future. And that's not just about recent graduates. It's also about mid-career people. Universities and colleges need to help not only students but also instructors and the entire administration.
Everyone must feel that they have agency to learn, create, and innovate with modern tools that expand their potential and help them be nimble in a fast-changing world. The challenges of today are daunting, but we can shape the application of these powerful technologies in ways that deepen human potential and foster a thriving planet for generations to come.