AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
Every week, Jeff Wilser sits down with the people building, breaking, and reckoning with AI — from the CEO of Upwork to the pioneer who coined "AGI" to an AI social network where bots wrote manifestos and had existential crises. Wilser is the author of eight books, AI keynote speaker, and the kind of interviewer who'd rather find the story no one's telling than rehash the headline everyone's read. Named by Inc. Magazine as one of the best ways to get AI-savvy. Included in UC Berkeley's data science curriculum.
AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser
Creating an AI-First University, w/ Kogod Dean David Marchick
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What happens when a business school decides AI isn’t a bolt-on elective, but the operating system for how students learn marketing, finance, entrepreneurship, and leadership?
In this episode of AI-Curious, we’re back with David Marchick, Dean of the Kogod School of Business, to see what changed after his earlier promise to become the country’s first AI-first business school. We dig into what “AI-first” actually means in practice, what worked (and what failed), and how a culture of experimentation turned AI adoption from a handful of pilots into a school-wide shift.
We also tackle the most unavoidable issue in education right now: cheating. David shares Kogod’s approach to disclosure, ethics, group work, oral exams, and why “blue books” may be making a comeback. From there, we zoom out to the bigger stakes: the existential threat AI poses to universities, how the higher ed business model may change, and what skills still matter when AI can generate content on demand.
Guest
David Marchick — Dean of Kogod School of Business
Key topics we cover
- 3:56 — The “tipping point”: how AI moved from experiments to 90% of faculty using it
- 7:16 — What “AI-first business school” really means: AI + fundamentals + “power skills”
- 10:32 — Cheating and assessment: disclosure statements, prompts, oral exams, blue books
- 16:51 — A prompts-only entrepreneurship course and what personalized learning could become
- 22:06 — Non-technical students building apps and graduating with an AI-driven portfolio
- 23:38 — Practicing negotiations against AI counterparts with different personalities
- 25:04 — Agentic workflows as a management tool, not just a technical novelty
- 29:13 — The university headwinds: demographic cliff, international enrollment, funding, AI
- 38:58 — Leadership lessons: top-down AI culture plus bottom-up workflow redesign
- 40:42 — How David uses AI personally, including Tour de France route training plans
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