01/19/2026

How I Became Our University’s “AI Guy”

by Joseph Brown

Image credit: “For the Future” mural panel in the Colorado State Capitol Rotunda. Mural artwork by Allen T. True, lettering by Pascal Quackenbush, and verse from Colorado Poet Laureate Thomas Hornsby Ferril’s “Here is a Land Where Life is Written in Water.” 

Photo: Joseph Brown

How did this begin?

In January 2023, at the urging of a supervisor who had heard me express concern about ChatGPT’s capabilities, I sent a modest email to our Associate Vice Provost for Communications.

I want to be clear. I don’t typically write emails to anyone with any version of “vice” or “provost” in their title. It was a stretch, to be sure. But I kept it simple and said something like, “If the Provost is thinking of sending out a message on AI, I’m happy to help in any way I can.”

That’s where it started. Now, three years later, I have become one of our institution’s “AI Guys”. At this point, most institutions have someone like me, and obviously half the time, they’re not a “guy” at all. It’s usually not an official position, but some institutions have started creating titles like “AI Specialist” or “AI Learning Consultant.” The rest of us are (or were) in a related position that, when all of this erupted, became the central point for all the questions and anxieties ushered in by generative AI.

What does this “AI Guy” do?

The list I’m going to share below is going to look intentional, but to be honest, I just started doing things that I thought needed to be done. It was very rare that someone told me to stop (in fact, I can’t think of a single example of that). It’s been an exhilarating time, professionally speaking, and the opportunity to be creative and curious about something new in higher education was something I’ve been so grateful to experience. I’ve also appreciated the autonomy and trust my institution granted me.

As an “AI Guy,” I…

• Created the CSU AI Community of Practice, an interdisciplinary group to foster collaboration on AI policy and pedagogy. It has now grown to 45 members.
• Created and maintained our “AI & Academic Integrity Blog” to deliver timely guidance during the early days of AI disruption.
• Co-created/ co-led our TILT Spring GenAI Workshop Series (now in its second year) featuring innovative approaches from all over our campus.
• Created dozens of guidance resources: Our “Fall Semester Survival Toolkit,” is still one of our most read resources, but stands alongside a faculty framework for using GenAI in assessment, an evolving syllabus statement resource, guidance on agentic browsers, and student-focused ethical use resources like our “Navigating AI”.
• Served on our system-wide task force, leading to a coherent (we hope) response to AI challenges across the CSU system.
• Delivered over forty presentations and workshops (yes, I keep track) on GenAI policy, pedagogy, and practice to faculty, administrative leadership, student, and external audiences.
• Served as subject matter expert for national and local media.

I’m sure there are other activities I’ve forgotten to list, but the one I wanted to focus on last, has been, I think, the most important. It was this:

I am the person they can call.

When something happens, when some new innovation worries people, and when someone needs an answer or to speak to someone who could drill down and find that answer, they often call me.

I don’t want that to sound like I know the answer to every question. In fact, I think it has been my willingness to be honest and say “I don’t know” or “Let’s find out together” that has resonated most with my colleagues. At the same time, I’ve been the person who has leveled with them when there wasn’t an answer: when the situation was unresolvable and they just needed someone to empathize with how hard all of this has been.

What takeaways can AI Guy share?

1. Don’t wait for a title. Higher education is notoriously slow to react. If I had waited for a committee to be formed or (worse) for funding to be established, really important structural work would never have been done, faculty and students wouldn’t have had what they needed, and our university community would have been pushed further behind in adapting to this new landscape. Just do the next helpful thing for your unit or campus and let the title settle itself. Don’t wait for permission to do good, helpful work.
2. Practical concerns over pontificating. One of the reasons that I have built trust on our campus is that I have prioritized helping in the small, everyday ways that presented themselves. I built toolkits, drafted sample syllabus statements and assessment frameworks, helped STEM colleagues understand process-model writing, and brainstormed with a fashion merchandising faculty member about how to save her favorite parts of a hands-on assessment in a Google Lens era. They were little wins, but they built trust and authority. By contrast, I’ve left pontificating about AI on LinkedIn to others. Only one of those approaches seemed helpful to the people in my life.
3. Your background, whatever it is, is a feature. I recognize and value the work of engineers and scientists focused on AI. That technical expertise will always have a center seat in our understanding of this issue. However, I’ve found that my experience as an English professor and as an Academic Integrity professional gave me a valuable perspective to share as our campus wrestled with questions of preserving critical thinking, reframing authenticity, and rethinking how we would know if students were actually learning what we have been teaching. Think about what your disciplinary background helps you see clearly about this issue and don’t be shy about sharing it.  

What’s next for AI Guy?

I’m excited about the future. I can’t wait to build the next helpful thing for our campus. At the same time, academic integrity has never been more precarious as a guiding educational principle, but it has also never been more on the minds of faculty, academic leaders, and (hopefully) students. I suspect that we’re seeing a shift in societal norms that govern what we think constitutes honest and authentic work before we can see where this will lead us. Naturally, we feel anxiety about it even if we’re glad that we have some role in helping it all take shape.

Personally, I feel the tension deeply. I’m a literature professor at heart and so I will always feel the strong pull to the academic traditions and practices that have served us well: namely reading, writing, thinking, and sharing ideas. At the same time, I was a science fiction scholar before I was “AI Guy” or even “Director of the Academic Integrity Program.” What science fiction teaches us isn’t a simple, uncomplicated hope for the future, but that the tension between what we know the world is and what it could be is the start of a critical judgement that serves us well as the present and future collide and we are borne out, as Robert Penn Warren said, “into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.”