AI & the University: Pursuing Genuine Intelligence

The university of today is not the university of the 20th century, or of the 19th, or of the centuries preceding. Particularly, the University of Virginia today, while still bearing the name of Mr. Jefferson’s University, is not the university of 1819. Some of these changes are glaringly obvious: the UVA of 1819 did not have the geographical reach or global reputation of the UVA of 2025 (nor did it have national championship athletic programs!). However, a more subtle change to the University of Virginia in the centuries since its founding has come upon all universities. That change is the shift, observed in nearly all institutions of higher education, away from the primacy of the liberal arts for their own sake and towards the university as a center of career preparation. Although this shift has its critics, it must be said that it is in some ways a good thing—for one, a related trend is that access to higher education has become more universal than it was in the 19th century. But there are also negatives that advocates of the traditional university are quick to point out.

One that receives less commentary, it seems, is that universities as centers of job-training are hard-pressed to keep up with a labor market that is constantly in flux. The emerging technology of Artificial Intelligence, for example, which has grown by leaps and bounds in the few years it’s been in the public eye, is likely to significantly reshape the professional career landscape, perhaps to an even greater degree than the internet has. A recent article by Ezra Klein in the New York Times asked the question: what does it mean for a 19-year-old marketing student that many marketing jobs will potentially be replaced by A.I. within the next five years? Mr. Klein did not have a concrete answer to that question, and we at the Blue Ridge Center don’t either. One is occasionally struck by the sensation of being adrift on a vast sea, with no shore and no star in sight, aided only by a weakly drifting compass. In such a situation, navigation is nigh-impossible—the task at hand is to gain your sea legs.

Here at the Blue Ridge Center, we are engaged in our mission as a kind of scaffolding to UVA students’ regular programming—we exist to help them get their sea legs. In practice, that looks like exposing them to the important conversations of today, engaging deeply with them on principles of philosophy, politics, economics, technology, and entrepreneurship, and helping them to think. The future is uncertain. The water is rough, and it is difficult to stand. At the Blue Ridge Center, we’re all for upholding the project of the university to develop students—young people—of real intelligence, who will venture forth into tomorrow’s world able to withstand its uncertainties. We are driven to supplement the mission of the university by developing young men and women of genuine intelligence, able to venture forth into a rapidly changing world with confidence.