AI and the future of universities
Think tank: HEPI
Author(s): Edited by Dr Giles Carden; Josh Freeman
October 16, 2025
This report from UK think tank HEPI brings together leading voices from universities, industry and policy.
A new collection of essays, AI and the Future of Universities (HEPI Report 193) edited by Dr Giles Carden and Josh Freeman, brings together leading voices from universities, industry and policy. The collection comes at a point when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is projected to have a profound and transformative impact on virtually every sector of society and the economy, driving changes that are both beneficial and challenging. The various pieces look at how AI is reshaping higher education – from strategy, teaching and assessment to research and professional services.
The nine human contributors include: Dr Vinton G Cerf, Vice-President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google; Professor Dame Wendy Hall FRS, Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton; and Professor Rose Luckin, Professor of Learner Centred Design at the UCL Knowledge Lab.
The collection, which has been kindly supported by the University of Southampton, includes a chapter on ‘Artificial intelligence and the future of research’ written by OpenAI’s ChatGPT using a carefully created prompt. Readers are asked to compare this piece to the human-written essays and to form their own opinions on its strengths and weaknesses.
