[0:00]I now take the pleasure of inviting on stage Mr. Vineet Agarwal, managing director Transport Corporation of India. He is chairing this session.
[0:09]It is a pleasure to welcome on stage Dr. Cynthia K. Larive, Chancellor University of California, Santa Cruz. Please put your hands together and give a warm welcome.
[0:21]They are here for a fireside chat. A very warm welcome to both of you.
[0:26]May I request Mr. Vineet Agarwal to take this session forward?
[0:36]Good afternoon. This session is between you, between us and lunch. Uh, so we'll try to make it quick, but uh, insightful and incisive.
[0:50]So, Dr. Cynthia Larive, Chancellor University of California at Santa Cruz, ladies and gentlemen.
[0:58]It is a pleasure to have you, and thank you for joining us in a session with Dr. Larive, the Chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz.
[1:09]Cynthia, it's a pleasure to have you and many thanks for agreeing to address IIM's National Management Convention.
[1:16]You are a top academic leader in the US, and you head a large institution that is renowned for its commitment to social and environmental justice and research into the world's complex challenges.
[1:27]Your success story is something that a lot of Indians can relate with. You are a first generation college graduate and you earned your PhD while raising your daughters.
[1:37]You have used your authority to support students from all backgrounds to access the best of education.
[1:43]You have also led research and innovation in curriculum and experiential learning. UC Santa Cruz is one of the few universities that specially serve the communities that have been historically underserved by higher education institutions in the US.
[1:59]Under your leadership, UC Santa Cruz has built up a large funding support for research and it has set up innovation and business engagement hubs to connect industry with academia.
[2:12]We're looking forward to hearing your insights and ideas for making higher education a force of transformation and resilience for the world. Thank you for joining us and a very warm welcome to you.
[2:26]Ladies and gentlemen, let me start with a quote from Aldous Huxley.
[2:32]Knowledge is acquired when we succeed in fitting a new experience into the system of concepts based upon our old expectations.
[2:40]Understanding comes when we liberate ourselves from the old and so make possible a direct unmediated contact with the new, the mystery, moment by moment of our existence.
[2:56]Lately, the higher education sector has been in the news for the wrong reasons. The leading universities around the world have received a lot of attention because of the liberal education, internationalism, and permission to young people to challenge the status quo in knowledge, thought and behavior, exactly what Huxley said that was needed to build our understanding of the world.
[3:21]Ironically, the universities are feeling the heat for doing exactly what they've been doing for thousands of years. But it is what it is. They and the academic world has to carry on with their fundamental job of breaking fresh ground in science, technology, culture, politics, business and whatever is worth exploring and learning.
[3:42]Educational institutions need to continuously push the frontier of intelligence and facilitate global transformation and resilience.
[3:51]The issues for higher education go beyond these transitory politics as the existential challenges from technology and societal disruptions are even more profound.
[4:04]The business of education needs a big upgrade to deliver new knowledge and therefore build understanding of new ways to address the new vulnerabilities and to produce workers and entrepreneurs, citizens and leaders with competencies for a complex world.
[4:23]The educational institutions need to broaden the horizons and include international dynamics in the curriculum. They need to, of course, to international research and innovation and build global economic, environmental and societal resilience.
[4:38]There is also a need for interdisciplinary education to develop future leaders with a big picture mindset. Most importantly, which I believe, institutions need to inculcate empathy, compassion and acceptance of vulnerability for the new generation leaders.
[4:57]India is a major supplier to of students to American universities and there's a great demand for American education innovations in India.
[5:07]Universities on both sides could gain tremendously by exchanging students and faculty at scale and undertake joint research, especially in the new emerging areas.
[5:17]Cynthia is with us today, and we would love to know her experience with aligning higher education with the new economic, technological, social and climatic needs of the world.
[5:30]It is my pleasure to invite Cynthia to now deliver the keynote address of this session. Thank you.
[5:42]Thank you, Mr. Agawal. And it's really a privilege to be here with you today at the 52nd IEMA National Management Convention.
[5:51]Thank you to AIMA for convening this important gathering, and for inviting me to join you here in New Delhi.
[5:58]I come to you from the University of California, Santa Cruz. It's one of the 10 campuses in the University of California system.
[6:06]The system serves about 300,000 students and is widely regarded as the world's leading public research university system.
[6:17]My campus is home to about 20,000 students. We sit on a Redwood Forest overlooking the beautiful Monterey Bay.
[6:27]UC Santa Cruz has a unique approach to higher education. We are a research powerhouse, and we're also committed to widening educational access and opportunity and to providing our students with an unparalleled educational experience.
[6:44]We are recognized for excellence in astrophysics, genomics, marine sciences, computer science and engineering and digital arts.
[6:56]Our researchers were the first to map the human genome, posting it online to ensure it was in the public domain.
[7:05]UC Santa Cruz scientists have been central players in the launch and use of the James Webb Space Telescope and the Vera Rubin Observatory.
[7:15]Our campus farm pioneered sustainable organic agriculture and launched the organic food movement in the United States.
[7:24]Interdisciplinary collaboration is one of our hallmarks. UC Santa Cruz is a place where astrophysicists engage with artists, engineers partner with humanists, social and computer scientists work side by side to tackle the most important issues of our day.
[7:43]We are a campus deeply committed to inquiry, innovation and the public good. That public mission has never felt more urgent than it does now in this era of extraordinary change.
[8:00]And that brings me to the theme of this conference: resilience and adaptability in a changing world.
[8:06]It's not hyperbole to say that artificial intelligence is the most disruptive change I've observed in my lifetime.
[8:15]AI is rapidly changing education, amplifying and accelerating scientific research and discovery, impacting businesses across most sectors, changing the technologies we use for defense and for physical and cyber security.
[8:32]It is challenging many of our social and ethical norms.
[8:38]When I was a chemistry student, I carried a slide rule in my backpack. Some of you may remember those.
[8:47]They're elegantly simple tools for calculation, but then in the 1970s, affordable, pocket-sized calculators arrived on the scene, and almost overnight the slide rule disappeared.
[9:00]Teachers worried that calculators would make students forget how to think and to do mathematics. Does that sound familiar?
[9:08]Today we hear the same concerns about artificial intelligence. Back then, calculators didn't eliminate the need for mathematics in problem solving.
[9:18]They freed us to solve problems more quickly and accurately, and to focus on solutions rather than computations.
[9:27]Today I believe AI can do the same. Every generation has had its panic about new technologies, the printing press, the internet, Wikipedia.
[9:40]I still recall the alarm we educators felt when Wikipedia emerged. Could students really cite something that anyone could edit?
[9:51]Crowd-sourced information. Yet, two decades later, Wikipedia is one of the most widely used repositories of human knowledge, and it now feeds the very AI models we're debating.
[10:05]The lesson is this: universities do not vanish in the face of new tools. We adapt, we reimagine, and we keep our eyes on the mission that endures, to educate, to mentor, to discover, to serve.
[10:23]But we must be candid in this conversation. The rapid pace, scale and impact of artificial intelligence are unlike anything we've seen before.
[10:33]And the United States, early studies show that entry-level workers into the fields most exposed to AI, think software engineering, customer service, data analysis, even some creative industries, are seeing real declines in job postings.
[10:52]And these are the very graduates that universities are sending into the workforce. This is where resilience and adaptability come into sharp focus.
[11:03]We cannot simply prepare students for the jobs of today because those jobs may not exist tomorrow.
[11:11]We must prepare them for uncertainty, for careers that will demand not only technical skills, but also judgment, ethical reasoning, systems-level thinking, collaboration, and the courage to innovate and lead in unchartered territory.
[11:37]That's the calling of universities today.
[11:40]So in this moment of rapid technological change, it's critical not to just teach about AI, but to teach with AI.
[11:51]Across disciplines, UC Santa Cruz faculty are fundamentally rethinking how they teach, assess learning, and engage students.
[12:01]Some faculty ask students to compare AI-generated text with human writing, to critique it, improve it, and learn from it.
[12:10]Others use AI to generate case studies, exam questions, or interactive scenarios, allowing instructors to spend less time on what can be tedious administrative tasks and more time engaging students in meaningful dialogue.
[12:28]Our teaching and learning center has been essential in this work, collaborating with campus educators to inspire their exploration of new and innovative teaching practices.
[12:41]Our powerful classroom innovation comes from one professor, Professor Maggie Seif El Naser, in our computational media department.
[12:53]In her human-centered AI course, students bridge the gap between understanding core AI technologies and applying human-centered principles to their design, deployment and critical evaluation.
[13:06]This approach allows students to explore both the technical foundations and the humanistic dimensions of AI, developing new models for collaboration, frameworks for fostering human creativity through AI co-creation tools.
[13:22]This approach fosters not just fluency with AI tools, but judgment, creativity, and the ethical use of generative AI models.
[13:32]History Professor Benjamin Breen uses generative AI to let students converse with digital representations of historical figures, turning students from passive learners into active participants in dialogue with the past.
[13:48]The exercise fosters empathy and critical thinking, as students analyze AI responses, identify possible flaws, and fact-check AI claims.
[14:00]For example, in one module on the Roman Empire, students found that AI often stumbled on dates and context, insights that deepened both student skepticism and their understanding.
[14:14]AI is no longer a niche skill. It pervades nearly every profession.
[14:18]A student who lacks basic literacy with generative AI may find themselves at a disadvantage or even obsolete in today's workplace.
[14:28]That's true not only for engineers and data scientists, but also for poets, for social scientists and health professionals.
[14:36]AI shouldn't be viewed simply as a tool for drafting essays, building apps, or making shopping lists.
[14:44]It is truly powerful in enabling rapid exploration, insight generation, creativity, and novel solutions to complex and long-standing problems.
[14:56]To that end, we must teach students not only how to use AI, but also to recognize its limits, to identify when it hallucinates, when it is biased, and how to guard against our over-reliance on it.
[15:10]We train students to question AI answers. Is that correct? Is this fair? Is it helpful? Those are timeless questions leaders must ask in every field.
[15:23]And our responsibility extends beyond our undergraduate classrooms. As AI reshapes industries, mid-career professionals, including many senior workers, may find their skills outdated.
[15:36]Historically, worker retraining has not been a central role for universities. But in this era, I believe it should be.
[15:43]Universities can be valuable partners to business and industry, providing upskilling, retooling, and reliable pathways for professionals to stay competitive and engaged throughout their careers.
[15:58]AI is also transforming research. Let me give you a glimpse into what AI is already making possible.
[16:05]I'm deeply proud of the significant roles UC Santa Cruz astrophysicists have played in the Vera Rubin Observatory project in Chile.
[16:15]From its early stages through its construction, our researchers are deeply involved in the observatory's ongoing scientific leadership and in its legacy survey of space and time.
[16:28]Using a massive camera, it is capturing the deepest and most dynamic portrait of the night sky ever assembled.
[16:38]Tens of millions of galaxies, stars, asteroids tracked across both space and time.
[16:45]It's fair to say that the legacy survey is not possible without AI.
[16:50]Artificial intelligence is helping astronomers sort through an unimaginable flood of data, 60 trillion bytes of cosmic images collected every night.
[17:04]And a new data set is released every two weeks. Within that ocean of data, there may be exploding stars, unknown asteroids, even entire galaxies that have not been seen before.
[17:18]Human eyes could never process it all. With AI, discovery becomes possible.
[17:25]In genomics, AI is helping us understand human health in ways we could scarcely imagine a decade ago.
[17:32]UC Santa Cruz is home to the genome browser, a free tool that scientists worldwide use to analyze the human genome.
[17:41]Two new AI integrations on the genome browser are accelerating the discovery of genetic variations that may cause disease.
[17:50]That can shorten the path to diagnosis for families who in the past might have waited years for answers. And we all know how time can make a difference with the treatment of diseases.
[18:03]Two UC Santa Cruz research projects leverage advanced forms of AI to improve how scientists measure and predict the effects of climate change and do so at a fractional cost of traditional methods.
[18:18]These are not examples of AI algorithms and machine learning replacing scientists. They're examples of how this enabling technology is expanding the very frontiers of human knowledge.
[18:30]Just as the internet sparked innovations and industries we could not have foreseen, from e-commerce to telemedicine to streaming entertainment, AI will no doubt open frontiers we can scarcely imagine.
[18:44]I could see new sectors emerging in personalized medicine, precision agriculture and climate resilience.
[18:52]Across existing fields, AI will expand human capacity, helping scientists test ideas faster, doctors deliver care more effectively, and engineers and artists push beyond the current limits.
[19:07]AI's promise is not just efficiency, but entirely new opportunities that will require human ingenuity at every step.
[19:16]At the University of California, we see AI as more of than a tool. It is a defining moment, and we are committed to leading responsibly in this moment.
[19:27]Our vision has three pillars: scaling innovation responsibly, ensuring AI advances knowledge without eroding public trust, forging partnerships with industry, government and universities around the world, because AI's challenges and opportunities are global.
[19:47]Preparing the workforce not only for technical fluency, but for leadership, adaptability and resilience in an AI-driven economy.
[19:57]As a public university system, we feel not only the opportunity, but the responsibility to ensure that AI serves the public good.
[20:08]At least in the near term, AI will not replace the human mind. But it will change how we use it, and what we use it to accomplish.
[20:17]Our role as educators and leaders is to make sure that change is for the better, that we teach not only how to use AI, but how to ask the questions AI cannot, that we prepare not only skilled workers, but thoughtful citizens, that we nurture not only adaptability, but imagination.
[20:38]And the world is counting on us, not only to prepare students for jobs, but to prepare them for resilience and leadership in a rapidly changing world.
[20:48]That is our shared responsibility, and it's also our greatest opportunity. Thank you.
[21:08]So we have a bunch of questions that have come in but before that, um, let me ask you a little bit more of a fundamental question, which I think is now with AI coming in, is becoming more and more prominent.
[21:26]Um, will AI make institutions like colleges and universities redundant in the near future?
[21:33]It's it's a good question. We wondered that too about, um, uh, Wikipedia and Internet, you know, based courses like Coursera offers.
[21:46]You know, I think the, um, AI will certainly change the way the university, uh, functions. I don't think it will make the university obsolete.
[21:53]I think what students need, uh, as part of their education are experiences, hands-on experiences.
[22:02]This is a focus of our work at UC Santa Cruz, to get students out into the field to study ecology first hand, to help them with internships and companies and clinics, to do research and and art.
[22:16]It is those experiences and that allows you to take what you're learning in the classroom and implement it in ways that are generative, in a way that generative AI can supplement but probably not replace.
[22:33]Right. And maybe you can take it offline with her, please. Um, again, thank you so much for joining us today.
[22:45]Thank you. We express our thanks to Dr. Cynthia Larive. Thank you for being here and being a part of this discussion.
[22:58]With that, we conclude this session.
