Beyond the Tool

AI Influence

Explore how UMSI faculty are helping shape the future of human-centered AI education through experimentation, collaboration, and critical inquiry.

Artificial intelligence may be transforming higher education at an unprecedented pace. Still, at the University of Michigan School of Information, faculty are increasingly focused on a more enduring question: what distinctly human capabilities matter most in an AI-driven world?

That question sat at the center of UMSI’s recent faculty retreat, where faculty, academic leaders, and staff from across the school gathered to discuss how AI is reshaping teaching, learning, research, and professional preparation. Conversations stretched well beyond technology itself, exploring everything from pedagogy and assessment to creativity, systems thinking, ethics, and the future identity of information education.

The retreat surfaced both excitement and urgency. Faculty described using AI to support literature reviews, prototype ideas, facilitate public workshops, analyze data, and accelerate research workflows. Others discussed how the tools are reshaping communication practices, reducing friction in creative work, and helping students engage more rapidly with complex concepts. 

At the same time, faculty raised important concerns about overreliance, intellectual shortcuts, and the growing challenge of ensuring students are still developing deep reasoning and mastery.

“The output may look reasonable, but sometimes the process of struggling with the problem, understanding the constraints, forming a mental model, and evaluating tradeoffs is missing,” said Associate Professor Jiayu Zhou in a faculty discussion following the retreat. “That worries me, because those are exactly the skills we want students to build.” 

Across conversations, a strong consensus emerged that the future of education will depend less on teaching students how to simply use AI tools and more on cultivating the human judgment required to guide, evaluate, critique, and responsibly apply them. 

For many faculty, that distinction reinforces UMSI’s long-standing strengths in human-centered education.

“I think a throughline in both of these excellent expositions from David and Aadarsh is humanness,” wrote Lecturer Katie LaPlant in a faculty email exchange after the retreat. “The real product of education is the student’s own judgment and humanness.” 

Participants repeatedly returned to the idea that UMSI’s value proposition is not simply rooted in technical instruction, but in helping students navigate the complex human systems surrounding technology. Retreat discussions emphasized communication, ethical reasoning, interdisciplinary thinking, systems analysis, and accountability as increasingly essential competencies in an AI-assisted world. 

The conversations also underscored how deeply interconnected AI integration has become across higher education, influencing not only curriculum and assessment, but also student support, communications, operations, and experiential learning. Faculty explored new teaching models, including oral defenses, collaborative critique, discussion-based evaluation, and process-focused assignments that encourage students to demonstrate reasoning rather than simply submit polished outputs actively. 

For Associate Professor Kentaro Toyama, experimentation itself may be the most important step forward.

“I do think some experimentation is the only way forward,” Toyama wrote, reflecting on the importance of building learning environments that preserve authentic thinking and intellectual struggle in the age of AI. 

Ultimately, the retreat reinforced a shared belief that this moment represents not a threat to UMSI’s mission, but an opportunity to sharpen it. As AI continues to reshape industries and professions, faculty increasingly recognize the importance of preparing students who can think critically, communicate clearly, evaluate responsibly, and lead thoughtfully in increasingly complex technological environments.