Ep. 207: AI for the Public Good with Venu Govindaraju

Venu Govindaraju is the senior vice president for research, innovation and economic development and a distinguished professor at the University at Buffalo. He's spent more than 30 years working in AI, building systems with real social impact — and he's also a poet, with a simple way of describing why the humanities still matter: AI finds the patterns. The humanities find the meaning behind them.

Inside Higher Ed editor in chief Sara Custer talks with him about the place of universities in the age of AI, why scientists should fail on purpose and how New York's Empire AI consortium model could help counterbalance big tech's grip on AI development. Stay tuned until the end of the episode when Venu reads a poem from his new collection or poetry Discovery of Self.