Syracuse University today announced the launch of a sweeping for Fall 2026, giving students an unusually complete set of pathways into one of the most consequential fields of the century.

The portfolio includes standalone �����������ǰ�’s and �������ٱ��’s degree programs, cross-disciplinary minors, hands-on co-curricular opportunities and research that together make up a single, coherent ecosystem.

“While AI degree programs are proliferating nationally, few institutions are bringing the full picture to market at once,” says , vice chancellor, provost and chief academic officer. “This is an entire environment for students who want to master AI and shape what it becomes. Whether they want to build the technology, govern it or apply it to a wide range of disciplines, there is now a clear path for these students at Syracuse.”

Academic Opportunities in AI

The Syracuse AI portfolio includes new and degrees in artificial intelligence science; a new �����������ǰ�’s degree in ; a �������ٱ��’s degree in ; seven AI minors; a broad research portfolio across multiple schools and colleges; and a peer-led bootcamp designed to provide students with hands-on AI experience as soon as they arrive on campus.

“Artificial intelligence isn’t confined to a single classroom or discipline at Syracuse University—it’s woven into how our students learn, how our faculty conduct research and how we prepare graduates for a workforce being reshaped by this technology,” says , senior vice president for digital transformation, chief digital officer and interim dean of the . “From new degree programs to cross-campus research initiatives, we’re building an AI portfolio that reflects both the urgency and the opportunity this moment demands.”

The breadth and depth of this portfolio are what distinguishes the Syracuse approach. The �����������ǰ�’s in integrative artificial intelligence is designed for students who want to combine AI with other interests, from public affairs to design to the life sciences. The seven new minors let students in any major add AI fluency in areas like policy, ethics and data. And the AI Bootcamp, a student-led program offering stackable microcredentials, provides students with AI immersion even before they declare a major.

Students are also driving the momentum through the student-led AI organization, United AI, which gives undergraduates hands-on research experience through its Foundry program, cross-campus education initiatives and direct partnerships with leading AI companies.

“Students don’t experience AI as a single subject, and we didn’t want to teach it that way,” says , interim dean of the and associate provost for academic programs. “We built this portfolio so that a future engineer, a future policymaker and a future artist can all find a serious path into AI here and can start the moment they arrive on campus.”

Robust Research

Syracuse University boasts a robust and growing portfolio of research and creative activity related to artificial intelligence. With work spanning engineering, computer science, law, public policy, communications and the humanities, faculty and students are applying AI to challenges ranging from cybersecurity and health care to media literacy and the arts. This interdisciplinary momentum reflects the University’s commitment to advancing AI research that is both technically rigorous and grounded in real-world impact.

“Our faculty are not studying artificial intelligence in the abstract,” says , vice president for research. “They are building systems that detect synthetic media, investigating how algorithmic decision-making affects communities, developing new approaches to cybersecurity and creating new AI capabilities beyond today’s large language models. Students who come to Syracuse will learn from researchers who are actively shaping how AI is built, governed and understood.”

Learn more about artificial intelligence at Syracuse University by visiting .

Ads generated by artificial intelligence are nearly indistinguishable from human-made ones, but new research shows they consistently underperform compared to human-made work when it comes to predicting short-term sales impact.

�ճ���� from global research firm Ipsos in collaboration with two faculty members from the  tested 20 ads across 10 brands with 3,000 U.S. respondents. They found that human-made ads outperformed their AI counterparts, though the gap between the two was surprisingly slim.

The study paired existing human-made ads, produced before 2021 to ensure AI tools were not used, with fully AI-generated counterparts built from the same strategic brief, the document that ad professionals use to outline objectives, messaging and tactics for a campaign. Ads were then viewed by real consumers.

The results challenge assumptions the advertising industry can no longer afford to ignore, faculty �����Ի��� say, while the project overall reflects Newhouse’s commitment to train students with the skills and forward-thinking strategies needed to be effective and ethical communicators.

The Research Team

Peruta, director of the  M.S. program, and Riby, professor of practice in the , led the University side of the study. Ryan Barthelmes, senior vice president of creative excellence at Ipsos, guided the project for the research firm.

Peruta oversaw the technical process of deconstructing existing ads and building the pipeline to produce their AI counterparts. AI was assigned to do everything a creative team would do, from interpreting strategy to developing a concept to producing the final spot.

“The human ads and the AI ads started from the same brief,” Peruta says. “The only thing that changed was who made them, and that’s exactly what we wanted to measure.”

Riby brought advertising strategy and creative expertise, including insights drawn from her The Big Idea in Advertising class, where Newhouse students have spent three years creating AI-generated ads and evaluating the results.

The 10 brands selected for the project spanned various sectors, including consumer packaged goods, fashion, automotive and technology: Cheerios, Chewy, Febreze, Fiat, H&M, Old Navy, Herbal Essences, Ray-Ban Meta, TurboTax and Visa.

Raina Rice ’26, an advertising major, supported the project behind the scenes, helping organize and manage the ad assets across all 10 brand pairings.

What They Found

The study produced three findings that promise to generate conversation across the advertising industry.

• Consumers largely cannot tell the difference. Only 13% of viewers who saw an AI-generated ad were at least somewhat confident it was made by AI—the same share as viewers who suspected human-made ads were AI-generated. With 40% of all viewers uncertain either way, the line between human and machine-made advertising is blurring quickly.

• Despite that perceptual similarity, a measurable effectiveness gap emerged. Using Ipsos’ sales-validated measures of advertising performance, human-made ads over-indexed against the benchmark by 11 points on average, while AI-made ads under-indexed by five. In practical terms, human ads are predicted to drive stronger short-term sales impact. AI can produce credible work, but on average it does not move the needle the same way.

• AI performed best when the brief was straightforward and product-driven, but struggled when the creative challenge called for storytelling, emotion or a genuine point of view. The strongest result in the study came from the Cheerios pairing, where a deeply human brief produced the highest combined effectiveness scores across both versions.

“Every semester in my class, I watch students create AI ads about themselves, and not one of them has ever loved their output enough to put it on their refrigerator,” Riby says. “That reaction is the premise of this entire study. If the creators themselves are underwhelmed, why would we expect consumers to feel differently? The data now backs that up.”

An Industry Perspective

Barthelmes says the study addresses a question the advertising industry has been circling but is reluctant to answer directly.

“Every [chief marketing officer] is being asked whether AI can replace their creative agencies, and creative directors are wondering about their futures,” Barthelmes says. “This research gives us a framework for that conversation. AI is a powerful tool, but the data shows that the human capacity for storytelling and emotional connection still creates a measurable competitive edge. The future is humans and AI working together.”

Looking Ahead

The Newhouse-Ipsos partnership reflects the school’s broader investment in industry-facing research that shapes how the next generation of communicators understands and works alongside AI.

The study’s key recommendation is clear: do not settle for “good enough.” AI has an important role in modern campaign strategy and execution, but it is not a replacement for the human-led creativity needed to deliver a competitive advantage.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already making substantial changes in every industry, shifting how we work, learn and organize our daily lives. But how can AI tools shape the field of building science? That was the central question at the Industry Summit on Artificial Intelligence for the Built Environment, organized by , Traugott Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and co-director of the (SyracuseCoE).

Structured as a working session, the May 4 summit featured expert panelists from industry, academia and government agencies, with 12 companies represented and a total of 35 participants. After opening remarks from Professor Dong, the first panel of the day explored AI applications in smart and human-centered buildings. Presentations included:

• From Equipment to Ecosystem: An AI Strategy for Thermal Energy Systems and the Built Environment, presented by Josiah Johnston, senior director of data science at Daikin Open Innovation Lab Silicon Valley
• AI in Buildings: A Perspective From the Field, presented by William Healy, senior director at TRC Companies
• Using AI for Building Optimization, presented by Evan Torkos, vice president for strategy at Nantum AI
• The Restoration of a Building or Home’s Comfort, a New Set of Opportunities With AI, presented by Michael Birnkrant, chief architect, service and aftermarket at Carrier Corporation

A moderated discussion led by SyracuseCoE’s executive director, , gave attendees a chance to dig deeper into these AI advances before breaking for a student poster session and lunch.

The afternoon panel widened the lens to AI’s role in building-connected infrastructure, covering the following topics:

• Load Flexibility and Electrified Commercial Buildings, presented by Mark Bremer and Julia Griffith from National Grid
• Hallucination of AI in Critical Infrastructure, presented by Herbert Dwyer, founder and CEO of EMPEQ
• A Semantic Foundation Unlocks Rapid Deployment of AI in the Built Environment, presented by Andrew Rodgers, co-founder of ACE IoT Solutions
• AI-Powered Communities: From Data to Resilience, presented by Nancy Min, co-founder and CEO of ecoLong
• Using GenAI to Accelerate Decarbonizing NYC Commercial Real Estate, presented by Thomas Yeh, consulting technical advisor, NYSERDA

The summit concluded with small group discussions: four breakout groups each co-facilitated by Syracuse University faculty and populated with a cross-section of academic and industry voices. This format ensured that the day’s themes were stress-tested in conversation and built the foundation for future collaborations. Dong plans to apply for funding for an interdisciplinary research center, such as a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center, that will advance university-industry partnerships in the healthy buildings field.

The summit made clear that AI’s role in the built environment is no longer speculative—it is operational and growing rapidly. From smarter HVAC to grid-scale flexibility to community resilience, the challenge now is deploying these tools thoughtfully, sustainably and at scale.

This event was supported by the University’s  through their Team Building for Large, Collaborative Grants program.

To be notified of future events and opportunities, sign up for SyracuseCoE’s ���ǰ���.

What happens when students are allowed to use artificial intelligence to solve cybersecurity challenges? That question took center stage as (EECS) Professor hosted a capture-the-flag (CTF) cybersecurity competition at the , bringing together 20 undergraduate, �������ٱ��’s, and Ph.D. students.

Unlike traditional CTF competitions, participants in this event were allowed to use modern AI assistants, such as ChatGPT and Claude, while solving challenges. The competition was designed not only to test technical skills, but also to explore how AI is transforming the way students learn and approach complex cybersecurity problems.

“Cybersecurity education is evolving rapidly with the rise of AI tools,” Hoque says. “This competition gave us a unique opportunity to observe how students use AI in real time—whether it helps them think more deeply about problems or simply speeds up solutions. Understanding that distinction is critical for the future of computer science discipline.”

Participants competed individually across 10 challenges spanning beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. The top three performers—Weixiang Wang (first place), Annepu Sai Charan (second place) and Armani Isonguyo (third place)—were ranked based on the number of challenges solved and the speed at which they completed them. Students described the experience as both exciting and challenging, noting that AI could guide their thinking but still required careful verification.

“This reflects how we approach computer science and cybersecurity education at Syracuse University,” says Alex Jones, the Klaus Schroder Professor and chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. “AI tools are only as effective as their operators. They do not replace expertise. Dr. Hoque’s work is a great illustration of this approach. We emphasize deep fundamental knowledge while also encouraging the use of AI. This ensures our graduates can effectively use, evaluate, guide, and validate AI-driven solutions.”

To better understand the educational impact of AI-assisted problem solving, Hoque collaborated with Farzana Rahman, an expert in computing and AI education. Together, they are investigating how students use AI tools, whether those tools support meaningful learning and how they influence confidence and problem-solving strategies.

“We’re seeing a fundamental shift in how students engage with complex technical tasks,” says Rahman. “AI can be a powerful learning aid, but we need to understand how to use it without compromising deep technical learning.”

Hoque plans to expand the CTF initiative by offering additional training sessions and forming student teams for regional and national competitions, further strengthening cybersecurity engagement within the EECS community.

The event is part of Hoque’s broader efforts, including , to advance education at the intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

Professor has developed an artificial intelligence bot that uses curated, course-specific materials to assist students in mastering the applicable legal rules and their application. These digital “coaches” are available 24/7 to assist students in understanding challenging concepts and then to quiz students on their application, providing immediate feedback in a variety of question and answer formats. Thus far, Graves has deployed the concept in his evidence and contracts courses.

Graves uses OpenAI’s private custom GPT feature, which allows him to provide students with an interactive experience that is narrowly tailored to his specific course. Graves accomplishes this with a comprehensive set of instructions (i.e., prompts) telling the custom coach exactly what to do—providing guardrails to keep it focused on the objective of assisting students in this course—and uploading copies of the course text and other key instructional materials that facilitate Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). This domain-specific RAG layer increases the accuracy of the coach’s responses in the context of this specific course and dramatically reduces the potential for errors, as compared to a generic Large Language Model (LLM) trained on generic data of varying quality.

This “walled garden” of course-specific material addresses the common issue with LLM AI platforms that indiscriminately draw from all information on the internet.

“The LLMs pick up a good deal of erroneous information from unreliable sources, and they miss a lot of really good information that’s behind firewalls,” Graves says. “The bot has been instructed to respond to students when they ask for answers by walking them through in a Socratic-style dialog much as I might in class or office hours. When assisting students, the coach relies first and foremost on the information uploaded in its RAG layer, not only helping to explain and quiz the students on accurate course doctrine, but pointing students directly to appropriate sources within the course text itself.”

Of course, the key to this approach is a collaborative relationship between Graves and the publisher of his course textbooks. While Graves is a co-author of his contracts textbook, the copyright is held by West Academic (the publisher of both the Learning Evidence and Learning Contracts textbooks used by Graves).  Graves worked closely with West Academic in developing an approach that would appropriately protect all copyrighted material uploaded to the coach’s RAG layer, and his use of both Learning Evidence and Learning Contracts is done under license from West Academic.

The use of the primary course text within the RAG layer effectively expands the value of the text far beyond the initially assigned readings. At the core of the coach’s domain-specific content, the textbook continues to anchor the coach’s role in assisting and quizzing students as they better learn to apply that content.

Supplementing the Teacher’s Role

Graves says, “the teacher’s role is not being outsourced to the coach—it is being supplemented in new ways for which narrowly tailored AI is uniquely suited.”

“The Coach does not replace basic course prep or attendance,” he says. “It is purely a supplement to these traditional teaching and learning tools—albeit a very effective one, arguably far more effective than traditional generic study aids or generic LLMs often used by students today. Perhaps most valuable is the coach’s ability to provide students with unlimited opportunities to apply the course material in a variety of assessment formats, all of which are subject to immediate feedback. At the end of the day, this is often the single most effective teaching and learning tool for law students, and the coach provides this tool in a manner that is always available and fully aligned with course content and course outcomes.”

Students access the coach through a dedicated course link, which provides for private interaction between student and coach, unless the student voluntarily decides to share the unique link generated by a specific conversation. The initial privacy of the conversation encourages students to ask questions they might otherwise be uncomfortable raising (the proverbial “dumb question,” which is often anything but).

It also allows students to use the coach in collaborative study sessions or to forward a conversation to Graves for further exploration. This latter feature is particularly useful in terms of quality control of both student prompts and responses by the coach.

“During the past two semesters, I’ve seen a few responses from the coach that could be improved and one blatant error,” Grave says. “However, the vast majority of interactive challenges arose from imperfect student prompts.”

Thus, the students get two additional benefits from using the coach: they learn the importance of effective inputs (prompts) and they learn the importance of verifying outputs.

Continuing to Fine-Tune the Tool

While the evidence and contract coaches have proven very accurate (Graves directly tests them regularly himself, in addition to frequent student feedback), AI remains imperfect, and the professor has continued to “fine-tune” his bots by uploading additional course-specific material based on his own testing and observations of student/coach interactions.

Graves teaches exclusively in the College of Law’s , so the 24/7 availability of his coaches is particularly important to a body of students located around the world.

“This has allowed me to be more efficient and effective with my time while giving our global students a uniquely tailored experience that will help them master course material, while being available at any time that is convenient to them,” he says.

Ask what keeps him up at night about artificial intelligence and you won’t get a single answer.

The University’s senior vice president for digital transformation and chief digital officer is tracking several threads at once: how AI can reshape higher education, why the job market isn’t collapsing the way headlines suggest, what it will take to rebuild trust in online content, the need for regulation and where the University’s massive stores of data fit into all of it.

Rubin shared some of his recent thinking as a panelist at a Maxwell School fireside chat on digital transformation and AI in New York state. Here are four takeaways.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how governments operate, how universities teach and how public institutions make decisions.

That was the central message of a recent fireside chat hosted by the . Dean moderated the conversation which brought together two leaders working at the forefront of AI adoption: , commissioner of the New York State Office of General Services (OGS), and , Syracuse University’s senior vice president for digital transformation and chief digital officer.

“The question before us is not whether AI will transform public life,” Van Slyke said. “It’s whether our institutions are ready to lead that transformation thoughtfully, equitably and effectively.”

Personalizing Learning and Expanding Access

Rubin opened the March 26 event with a claim about the stakes for higher education: AI, he said, has the potential to transform how universities teach in ways not seen in 200 years. “The idea of a professor standing in front of a room, lecturing—and students taking notes and then being assessed through projects, papers and exams—that model has not shifted,” he said. “What AI allows you to do is personalize learning.”

Personalization at scale has long been a challenge because no instructor can simultaneously tailor a course to every student’s pace and needs, he said. AI changes that equation.

Rubin shared how Syracuse has deployed more than 30,000 AI licenses across campus to drive equitable access and data security. Some students had already purchased AI tools on their own, while others could not afford them, he pointed out. Faculty and staff also needed a secure environment for uploading sensitive documents without routing data through commercial platforms.

Rubin also highlighted a less-discussed dimension of the University’s AI work: a private wireless network, built in partnership with JMA Wireless, that supports thermal sensors in academic buildings across campus. The sensors detect occupancy without capturing identifying information, allowing the University to optimize janitorial services, plan building capacity and, eventually, adjust heating and cooling based on actual use patterns.

A Measured Approach to Government AI

Moy noted that the state’s deliberate pace of technology adoption is a necessary safeguard rather than a liability. “I would contend that it’s important that government is risk-averse,” she said. “The information that we hold is really important—Medicaid data, health data, testing information. The importance of that stewardship becomes paramount.”

Her office oversees roughly 30 million square feet of state real estate, manages 1,500 procurement contracts valued at $44 billion and administers a design and construction portfolio of approximately $5.7 billion. Moy described the agency’s AI strategy as a measured approach. It involves first identifying low-risk, high-value applications, then building the data infrastructure to support them, and ensuring legal and operational frameworks are in place before scaling.

Moy said one of OGS’s most tangible AI investments is in procurement search. Agencies and municipalities navigating the state’s contract catalog often struggle to find what they need, undermining the efficiency those contracts are designed to provide. Moy said AI-assisted search is a logical starting point: low risk, no job displacement and an immediate opportunity to test what the technology can do.

The agency is also piloting AI-powered document summarization tools for bid documents and contract histories which are reported to save up to three hours per day.

Moy noted that backlogs present another opportunity, as they are a universal challenge across the public sector. She explained that while AI could help alleviate some of those challenges, agencies must be cautious; they cannot hand out productivity tools to every worker without first creating the right frameworks.

Jobs, Regulation and What Comes Next

Both speakers addressed audience concerns about AI’s impact on jobs—a topic that has gained urgency in New York following Governor Kathy Hochul’s , which is tasked with studying AI’s effects on the labor market.

Rubin cited research suggesting that less than 1% of the 1.2 million layoffs recorded in 2025 were directly attributable to AI, arguing that economic factors and structural business decisions are doing more to reshape the workforce than the technology itself. He expressed confidence that AI will ultimately create more jobs than it displaces, though he acknowledged that every job will change.

“If you don’t know how to incorporate AI into your domain and discipline, you will be at a disadvantage,” he said. “Students need to have the tools and the classes.”

Moy recalled the dot-com era and the transformation of publishing that upended models at institutions like the Brooklyn Public Library, where she once served as chief strategy officer. The fear and exuberance that accompanied those transitions, she said, mirrors what society is experiencing today.

“We want to make sure that we’re thinking about it ethically, that we’re balancing it according to public need,” she said. “And we’re having active conversations about those trade-offs.”

Both panelists returned repeatedly to the theme of transparency in AI systems, government data and institutional communications.

Rubin pointed to Anthropic’s practice of publishing system prompts as a model for responsible AI deployment and noted that Syracuse recently launched an AI-powered course search tool, called , that similarly makes its operating parameters visible. He also raised the challenge of AI-generated media and the difficulty of distinguishing real content from fabricated content online.

An Open and Ongoing Dialogue

The conversation drew questions from the audience.

A first-year Maxwell student and member of the University’s United AI club asked what precedent a recent court ruling holding social media platforms liable for algorithmic harm to minors sets for the future of AI regulation and whether platforms like ChatGPT should face similar oversight.

Rubin was direct: “We made the mistake with social media. These companies should have an obligation to have guardrails.”

Moy pointed to Hochul’s recent policy proposals targeting addictive technology, including requirements for more restrictive default settings on children’s accounts. She acknowledged that government is often a step behind rapid technological change, but argued that intervention becomes necessary when innovation results in public harm.

A second student raised concerns about AI’s potential to enable fraud, including falsified documents and biased algorithms.

“These are very real questions,” she said, emphasizing that OGS is working to understand its uses and risks. She argued that the answer isn’t avoiding AI but understanding it well enough to spot its misuse. “If we don’t understand it, we will fall behind.”

Rubin agreed, framing the detection challenge as both technological and philosophical: As AI becomes embedded in everything from autocomplete to document editing, defining what counts as “AI-generated” becomes increasingly difficult. “My gut is almost every piece of content out there will have some AI piece to it, assisting us,” he said. “So, it’s a technology challenge and a societal challenge.”

Van Slyke closed by noting that Maxwell’s role in preparing students for public service has always meant equipping them not just with technical knowledge, but with the ability to navigate the policy, governance and ethical dimensions that accompany it.

“The question is not what will AI do to our institutions,” he said. “It’s what will we choose to do with it.”

When Tyler Neary ’27and Orion Goodman ’27 scattered flyers across campus last spring advertising a new AI club, they saw a critical need: students needed to be included in conversations about a technology that would fundamentally reshape their futures.

“AI was at the point where it could help people in every single major, in every single profession, in every single job,” says Neary, a civil engineering major who co-founded United AI with Goodman, a biomedical engineering major, both in the (ECS). “We realized this was no longer just a computer science thing.”

What started as a room of 10 people has grown into , a recognized student organization (RSO) with more than 100 members representing every single school and college and most majors. Since its fall semester launch, the club’s focus has been democratizing AI literacy and ensuring students from all disciplines have a seat at the table as this technology transforms society.

The group will host a on Saturday, April 25, from 1 to 5 p.m. in the K.G. Tan Auditorium in the National Veterans Resource Center at the Daniel and Gayle D’Aniello Building, featuring industry speakers, demonstrations and faculty research showcases.

Why Students Need Leadership in AI Development

For Goodman, the urgency became clear watching rapid AI development. “When I’m going through college, watching AI capabilities escalate, it can be disempowering—and I figured my peers may be feeling the same way,” he says. “It felt threatening because there’s a small group of people making decisions about how the technology is being used, and others feel like they’re being left behind.”

That sense of being sidelined drove the co-founders to create what Neary describes as an empowerment space. “Something that we say a lot in the club is: don’t get used by AI, use AI to your benefit,” he says. “We’re the ones who are going into the workforce leading the charge and determining how we will use this technology now and into the future.”

The message resonated. Within weeks of tabling at campus events, students from ECS, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Newhouse School of Public Communications, the Whitman School of Management and the College of Visual and Performing Arts were showing up to meetings, eager to understand how AI would affect their fields and futures.

Bringing Humanities and STEM Into Conversation

When Alex Kahn ’27, a junior studying citizenship and civic engagement and political philosophy in the | , discovered United AI, he wasn’t looking for coding or technical skills, but was compelled by the policy implications of AI that were dominating news headlines. “AI was in every story, across every industry, and it felt like there was no escaping it and how it will affect you,” Kahn says.

As United AI’s recruitment director last fall, Kahn became instrumental in broadening the organization beyond its engineering roots. His approach focused on relevance rather than technical expertise. The interdisciplinary composition has transformed conversations within the club.

“Having people from different majors and disciplines means having that understanding that everyone’s mind works differently,” Kahn says. “The people who are writing code are not thinking the same way as the person majoring in fine arts, and having that creativity along with those technical skills, you’re able to build and think much differently.”

Goodman appreciates what non-engineering perspectives bring to the table. “As conversations around AI progressed, I began asking, ‘Where are the artists? Where are the policymakers? Where are the humanities majors?’” he says. “A lot of the population was not behind building this technology and still isn’t—but how do we provide a space for them to learn and join the conversation?”

From Concept to Creation: Student Projects Take Shape

United AI goes beyond theoretical discussion to hands-on application. Through four-week project cycles, students receive funding, access to premium AI tools and mentorship to develop their ideas.

Paige Siciliano ’29, a computer engineering major, led a second-place winning project during her first semester on campus. Her team’s AI-powered schedule builder, still under development, helps students manage their time by generating personalized daily plans based on individual learning styles, fixed commitments and flexible tasks.

For Siciliano and her teammates—Neha Redda ’29 and Ria Yagielski ’29—the project provided more than AI experience. “It really helped us find a way into the community of Syracuse, and it helped us feel like we belonged,” she says.

Building Community Around Shared Curiosity

Beyond projects and programs, United AI has cultivated what Kahn describes as “a school of thought on campus.” During a debate night last semester, members discussed everything from business applications to environmental impacts to personal usage philosophy, with some participants there simply to understand the technology rather than use it. “Being surrounded by club members and in this community of lifelong learners, we focus our educational efforts to not just learn the technical side, but also on practical application,” Kahn says.

Siciliano emphasizes the club’s welcoming atmosphere. “We came in as first-semester freshmen, two weeks into school. It didn’t matter if we had no background knowledge in AI or all the knowledge in the world—they create an atmosphere that makes you want to learn about it and continue to grow.”

To join United AI, . To learn more, follow the organization on or .

and the have partnered to launch an , a new self-paced credential designed to help business students evaluate sources, identify misinformation and apply research skills in a professional landscape increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence (AI).

The program, offered in collaboration with the Office of Microcredentials, is open to both Whitman undergraduate and graduate students and encourages the development of core skills in information literacy, which is a crucial competency for academic pursuits, and one that employers also describe as being essential. The skills learned also connect to the University’s of Information Literacy and Technological Agility and Critical and Creative Thinking.

“For Whitman students, the certificate fills a meaningful gap between classroom learning and professional readiness,” says Assistant Director of Experiential Programs Roshawn Kershaw. “It increases a student’s ability to find reliable information, assess its credibility and apply it with confidence. This is important for a business environment increasingly shaped by excess data and AI content. It sets them apart from others before they even realize. The certificate is now available to both undergraduates and graduate students, which means it can meet Whitman students wherever they are in their academic journey, reinforcing skills that will serve them from their first internship to the boardroom.”

To earn the certificate and digital badge, students take online self-paced tutorial modules that introduce them to key information literacy skills and library resources:

• Identifying Bias and Misinformation
• Types of Sources
• Evaluating Information
• Research as Process
• Search Basics, Part 1
• Search Basics, Part 2
• Syracuse Libraries Resources
• Student Guide to AI

“I am so excited to have these online tutorials become an official certificate and digital badge that is now available to both grads and undergrads,” says Librarian for Business, Management and Entrepreneurship Steph McReynolds. “We’ve offered the tutorials as part of the program for years, and students have asked for a certificate to show employers their accomplishments in this area, and now we can provide that digital credential.”

Information Literacy Librarian Kelly Delevan sees this certificate as an excellent template for the development of information literacy badges for other schools and colleges at Syracuse. The certificate is even serving as a model beyond our institution, as a librarian from another university has recently reached out to use the certificate module categories at their own library.

Can an AI company take government money and still set limits on how its technology is used? That question is at the center of an ongoing dispute between the Pentagon and Anthropic, and Syracuse University professor Hamid Ekbia says it exposes fundamental tensions in how the AI industry operates.

Ekbia, founding director of the Academic Alliance for AI Policy, says the Pentagon’s demand that Anthropic either change its approach or forgo its lucrative contract is a vivid example of current federal policy. “With the bulk of public AI funding in the U.S. still coming from defense, companies either have to budge or shut themselves out from this unique source of money,” Ekbia says.

While Anthropic has adjusted some safety policies, it has so far declined to allow its technology to be used for domestic surveillance or autonomous drones, a distinction Ekbia says matters.

“That is cause for celebration for any observer concerned about such applications,” he says. “But the question going forward is whether this will continue to be the case.”

Political and Economic Forces

Ekbia says the pressure on Anthropic reflects a broader shift in the federal government’s approach to AI regulation.

“The anti-regulatory policies of the Trump administration don’t leave much room for safety-oriented approaches to AI,” he says, adding that those policies push companies and oversight bodies toward “aggressive and often reckless behaviors in the name of innovation.”

Market competition makes the pressure worse. “The AI ecosystem is defined by furious competition among a few big players in a race to grab the lion’s share of the spoils in a rapidly growing industry,” Ekbia says. “The ‘moral economy’ of the AI industry is one of the jungle, where only the most reckless, ruthless, and aggressive behaviors are expected to be rewarded.”

Employees as a Wild Card

One factor that could shape the outcome is pressure from within Anthropic itself. Ekbia says employee resistance has played a meaningful role so far, with workers vocal during negotiations and leadership appearing to take that seriously.

But he cautions that employee influence is not guaranteed to last. “How critical will employees be in the future of the company given the current wave of white-collar under-employment, and how assertive will they be in expressing their resistance?” he says.

He outlines several other variables that will determine how the situation unfolds: whether competing AI companies are willing to fill the gap for the Pentagon, how hard the Trump administration continues to push for broad access to AI technology, and how well Anthropic can sustain itself financially without defense funding.

“The speed of change in these areas makes it hard to make solid predictions,” Ekbia says.

The Limits of Self-Regulation

Ekbia says the dispute ultimately tests a premise that Anthropic has staked its reputation on—that a company can be both commercially successful and a responsible steward of powerful technology.

“In the absence of federal policy, Anthropic aspired to play that role in the industry,” he says. “What is happening shows the limited efficacy of that aspiration. Society cannot rely on the industry to self-police itself, despite even the best intentions.”

He connects that failure to a broader culture in Silicon Valley, where prominent figures publicly embrace “effective altruism”—the idea that profit and doing good can coexist.

“The case of Anthropic shows how much of an illusion this is,” Ekbia says. “As the old saying goes, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.”

Milton Santiago, assistant professor of visual communications in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, has received the 2026 Innovation in Teaching Award (BEA)—one of the organization’s most prestigious honors for media educators.