ASU President challenges higher education leaders to rethink AI with purpose, intentionality and responsibility

“We're an institution that believes in the following democratic ideal: everyone needs to learn. Everyone should have access to learning. There should be very few barriers, financial or other barriers, to learning outcomes.”

That democratic ideal was at the heart of Arizona State University President Michael M. Crow's message during the 2026 Agentic AI and the Student Experience summit, where he shared a vision for harnessing artificial intelligence to fundamentally rethink higher education.

But realizing that vision, he shared, requires more than embracing agentic AI. It demands a clear purpose, responsible guardrails and a commitment to putting learners at the center of institutional transformation.

Calling AI "an unbelievable tool of unparalleled potential," Crow said that its promise depends on how thoughtfully it is developed and implemented.

While AI introduces opportunities to accelerate innovation, improve institutional operations and transform learning experiences, he cautioned against adopting technology simply because it is available.

"How do we use AI tools with a purpose?" Crow asked. "AI without a purpose is an amoral outcome, which will result in immoral acts."

For higher education, that purpose must remain grounded in improving learning outcomes and expanding opportunity.

Rather than focusing on how AI might replace workers or disrupt existing systems, Crow encouraged leaders to consider how the technology can help institutions serve students and society.
He also challenged conventional measures of technological progress. The speed of computing systems, the number of data centers constructed, or the volume of programs developed, he argued, are not meaningful indicators of success on their own.

Instead, he asked attendees to consider whether technological advancements are helping humanity address its most difficult challenges, from developing cancer treatments to managing complex planetary systems.

By measuring AI against outcomes that matter, institutions can move beyond technological adoption toward innovation that delivers meaningful benefits. “So we're trying to make certain that we enhance learning outcomes. That's our objective,” said Crow. “We produce college graduates from every family, every background, every type of intelligence, every level of preparation.”  

Achieving those outcomes requires more than ambition. It demands responsibility.

Throughout his remarks, Crow stressed that AI's unprecedented capabilities must be accompanied by thoughtful constraints, guidelines and human oversight.

"If you're just selling a machine to anyone to do anything, you're irresponsible," said Crow.

His concerns reflected the challenges facing institutions and society as AI capabilities advance: the pace of technological change, the growing complexity of AI systems and unequal access to emerging tools.

While these developments create extraordinary possibilities, he cautioned that failing to establish appropriate safeguards could have significant consequences.

For universities, the challenge is to integrate AI in ways that support innovation while protecting the people and communities these technologies are intended to serve.

This requires intentional design, clear expectations and a willingness to evaluate whether AI-enabled systems are producing the outcomes institutions seek.

Ultimately, Crow shared that AI's most significant contribution to higher education may be its ability to help institutions rethink the design of learning itself.

"We're going to have people learning in completely different ways," he said. "We need to restructure our entire sociocultural design of learning itself, but with guidelines, with controls, with rules."
This transformation begins by recognizing that students enter higher education with different experiences, abilities, responsibilities and educational needs.

Rather than expecting every learner to navigate the same structures, AI creates opportunities to develop more adaptable experiences that recognize and respond to those differences.
For Crow, however, institutional redesign is not simply about personalization or efficiency. It is about shifting greater agency to students.

"The change has to come in the empowerment of the student learner," he said.

That idea also emerged during his fireside chat with will.i.am, CEO & Founder, FYI.Al, Professor of Practice at ASU. When talking with will.i.am, Crow said: “I get the sense that what you're after basically is empowerment of the individual to be backed up by all those things that they think are important and all the things that back those things up. So this class is teaching people how to learn through design.”

Student empowerment also came up in the Leading in the Age of AI panel, which Crow also participated in at the summit. When asked about redesigning with AI in mind, Crow explained that AI can empower students as learners, moving them into a more powerful, self-designed position to overcome fear.

During the summit, Crow’s remarks offered a call to action for higher education leaders navigating the AI era.

Technology alone cannot deliver a more accessible and empowering educational system. Institutions must first define the outcomes they want to achieve, develop the safeguards necessary to pursue those goals responsibly and reconsider long-standing assumptions about how learning is organized and delivered.

For Crow, the ultimate objective remains rooted in the democratic ideal of ASU’s Charter, which he calls the single most important thing he’s done in his career at ASU. The charter states: ASU is a comprehensive public research university, measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed; advancing research and discovery of public value; and assuming fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities it serves.