In this episode of the Google Cloud: Passport to Containers series, theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson joins University of Michigan faculty members Ang Chen and David Jurgens, along with executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurship, Gregg Latterman, to discuss how AI is transforming the intersection of academia, entrepreneurship and computer science. Filmed on campus in Ann Arbor, the panel explores the rapid pace of technological change and how educators are preparing the next generation to navigate an AI-driven workforce. The conversation unpacks the balance between leveraging AI for efficiency – such as the "ZellBot" tool built with Google to help entrepreneurs fail faster – and maintaining the critical thinking skills required to audit and augment automated outputs.
The discussion also dives into the concept of "Intelligence Amplification" (IA), reframing AI as a tool that empowers human capability rather than replacing it. The guests share strategies for adapting the curriculum to include both technical proficiency and essential soft skills, emphasizing the enduring value of human insight and emotional intelligence. From ethical considerations regarding AI as a conversational partner to the democratization of business creation, the interview outlines a future where students use these technologies to solve problems and launch companies at unprecedented speeds.
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The Next Generation - AI from Faculty Perspective
TheCUBE Research’s Rob Strechay and Savannah Peterson speak with Bobby Allen, cloud therapist at Google Cloud, and Brandon Royal, senior product manager for Google Kubernetes Engine, for a Google Cloud Primer on AI and K8s, detailing the transformative intersection of AI, Kubernetes and GKE.
In this video, learn more about:
• How to get started in AI
• What it means to train a model
• Different model sizes
• The importance of inference
• How to evaluate the many models available
• The current state of AI
• Optimizing containers and AI at any level of scale
• "Farm to Table AI"
Executive DirectorZell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurship
Ang Chen
Associate ProfessorUniversity of Michigan
In this episode of the Google Cloud: Passport to Containers series, theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson joins University of Michigan faculty members Ang Chen and David Jurgens, along with executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurship, Gregg Latterman, to discuss how AI is transforming the intersection of academia, entrepreneurship and computer science. Filmed on campus in Ann Arbor, the panel explores the rapid pace of technological change and how educators are preparing the next generation to navigate an AI-driven workforce. The conversation un...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What is the speaker's perspective on the importance of connecting academia and technology, and what is the role of the guest in the context of this discussion?add
What are the benefits and potential drawbacks of using AI in education, and how can educators encourage responsible use while promoting critical thinking among students?add
What advice should students follow to succeed in careers influenced by AI?add
>> Good afternoon, Google fans, and welcome to a fantastic new location for us today. We're here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, actually on campus of the University of Michigan. And in fact, at one of Google's many beautiful offices here. My name's Savannah Peterson. Delighted to be bringing you episode 11 of our Passport to Containers series with some very special guests here in gorgeous Michigan. I have Ang, I have Gregg and David. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Gregg Latterman
>> Thank you.
Gregg Latterman
>> Thanks, Savannah.
Savannah Peterson
>> This is so fun. So you are all professors. I don't think I've gotten to interview maybe one professor on the show before, and I'm really excited to connect the worlds of academia and technology. I don't think it's ever been more important, nor has it ever been moving at a faster speed than it is right now. I do want to give you all a moment to talk a little bit about your role here on campus, your research, anything cool. And Ang, I'm going to start with you.
Savannah Peterson
>> Sure. I'm a faculty member of computer science and engineering, and I do research in computer systems, broadly speaking, computer software, cybersecurity, networking. And it's a pleasure to be here.
Savannah Peterson
>> It's really nice to have you. You cover a lot of bases. Yeah. Geez. And Gregg, I know you've got a fun role in the entrepreneurial side.
Gregg Latterman
>> Yep. So I'm the executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurship out of the Ross School of Business. And I'm also a clinical professor. So Zell Lurie Institute is co-curricular. So we are doing things outside the classroom, which allows us to do everything and anything. We also cover venture capital, and I teach.
Savannah Peterson
>> Awesome. Wow. You're also a busy man. We're going to dig into some of the cool things you're able to do particularly fast a little bit later in this interview, but I'm very excited. And what about you, David?
David Jurgens
>> I'm David Jurgens. I'm over in the School of Information and in the Computer Science of Engineering. So I study AI and natural language processing, so getting systems to work with regular language to interact with people.
Savannah Peterson
>> Which is super cool.
David Jurgens
>> It's a busy day these days.
Savannah Peterson
>> Yeah. How long have you been teaching that? Because I feel like we're living at the epicenter of that bubble right now.
David Jurgens
>> Nine years. And it has changed every year, but so much changed in the past few years. It's really an exciting time.
Savannah Peterson
>> Yeah, it totally is. So to get us warmed up here, when did you know that... And this is a fun one for you guys. When did you know that AI was going to change the landscape, change everything? David, I'll start with you.
David Jurgens
>> Wow. I remember seeing some of the first presentations on Google Translate at an academic conference.
Savannah Peterson
>> Yes, great example.
David Jurgens
>> And it was just a... You knew things were changing, and then I saw people who were also working in that space on machine translation just be like, "Oh, this is a huge game changer." And thinking what that meant for my research and then thinking about some of the tools like ChatGPT that came out and Gemini, just watching all of these different new technologies at such a rapid pace. But I think that was that first inkling of like, oh, something big is coming, and let's see what shape it takes.
Savannah Peterson
>> I love that. How long ago do you think that was?
David Jurgens
>> 2014.
Savannah Peterson
>> Oh yeah. Okay. So yeah, wow, a lot has changed in those-
David Jurgens
>> So much.
Savannah Peterson
>> Gregg, what about you? When did you know?
Gregg Latterman
>> I do not go back quite that far, but it was probably about three years ago. I was on faculty at another school and I brought 15 MBAs out to Los Angeles to go... We did like a four-day trip to go look at what was happening cutting edge at media entertainment companies. And I knew AI was here and it was fast, but I was not moving fast enough. And so going and immersing ourselves from startups to some of the biggest gaming companies to Disney, I came back from that trip and I was just like, I need to know everything. We need to move way faster. And because the other schools in Midwest as well, I got to spend more time out on the edges out here to really make sure that I'm moving as fast as we should be moving, because we can't move fast enough right now.
Savannah Peterson
>> I don't think anybody can. So don't worry, Gregg, you're not behind. There's the illusion of that, but I think we're all trying to learn at warp speed right now. Ang, what about you? When did you know?
Savannah Peterson
>> Yeah, for me, I think it's seeing how AI is on top of everyone's mind. It's not just an academic discussion anymore, not just in computer science. You see it in business settings, in religious settings. Everyone is thinking about how AI impacts our society. I think that's a big signal for me.
Savannah Peterson
>> Yeah, absolutely. It's certainly a convergence where we're all in the middle of figuring out what happens next right now. You mentioned speed, Gregg. How do you keep up?
Gregg Latterman
>> I mean, I think there's the personal side and then there's the academic side. To me, you have to immerse yourself in it and utilize whatever you can to make yourself more efficient. And there's this, as somebody that's not super tech-forward, I actually have to maybe spend a little more of an investment. Then obviously it makes you way more efficient. And I think our younger generation, the younger students right now in college especially, this is native to them, right? So for us to say, "This is how you should be doing it," we really need to make sure we're cutting edge. We've got a whole research series we're doing as well with entrepreneurship professors around the world that are showing us what they're doing with AI. But then our job is to put it into place to use it right now, not in a year, but-
Savannah Peterson
>> And make it actionable.
Gregg Latterman
>> 100%.
Savannah Peterson
>> I mean, to learn a tool at night basically and then flip around and have to teach that. Ang, how are you keeping up?
Savannah Peterson
>> I think interestingly enough, it's very helpful for me to learn new things because it used to be that I spent hours reading a paper and even more time reading books to learn. But with AI, it's actually becoming easier to learn. So I found that to be very helpful in educating myself in new areas.
Savannah Peterson
>> That's such a great point, especially with summaries and whatnot. It might be the end of the traditional white paper here in a while, maybe already. Dave, what about you? How are you keeping up? I mean, especially teaching the NLP class, which I have to call out because first of all, that is just cool. And second of all, I mean, people are looking at you to tell them how to prompt engineer.
David Jurgens
>> I mean, we do everything, and I say the students are probably a big reason. So I mean, I also am using AI to also help keep abreast of what, the current things. And students will come and say, "I heard about this technique. What do I do?" And then having to learn it very quickly the night before sometimes and trying to teach it the next day is really, that's the best way to keep up, but it's a fast space.
Savannah Peterson
>> I mean, it's just a wild flywheel with that. That is absolutely insane.
David Jurgens
>> It's so fun though. It's really, I mean, the pace and speed of which all of these things are happening, it's exciting. It somehow doesn't feel daunting anymore.
Savannah Peterson
>> And I feel like maybe for someone who's an academic of natural language processing with NLP, you're probably having a little bit of a moment right now.
David Jurgens
>> It is a great moment.
Savannah Peterson
>> Because I don't know that everybody would have even known what the acronym was per se.
David Jurgens
>> My parents know what I do now, which is really exciting. So it's out there. It's part of the public discussion in a way that I did not anticipate when I started this job. So it's really, it's a fun time.
Savannah Peterson
>> I know. Us nerds are cool now all of a sudden. It's a wonderful time to be a wonderful time to be us. I'm curious about this. I love that, Ang, you brought this up in terms of teaching yourself and using AI as a tool. I couldn't have the three of you here and not bring up the dark side of AI when it comes to academia, which is cheating and maybe minimizing critical thinking. I mean, there's not just crimes of the literal sense. I think there's some things that can happen there. So how are you... Ang, I'm going to start with you on this one. How are you empowering the students to see the incredible benefit while also discouraging some of the yuckier use of it?
Savannah Peterson
>> Yeah. I think it's important for students to learn AI as a tool for learning and for using AI as a brainstorming partner, but I think it's also important for students to develop critical thinking in asking the right questions. I think there, it's much more important to be thinking independently. I think using AI as a tool instead of relying on it too much to replace our thinking is important for the students and for ourselves.
Savannah Peterson
>> It is. Well, and we are of a generation or at least an awareness where we can detect when it's giving us the wrong answer or at least have a hunch and say, "Wait a minute, that doesn't fit." But if you've never experienced anything else, how would you know? Gregg, what's your advice to the students? How do you help balance that? Especially with entrepreneurship.
Gregg Latterman
>> Yeah. I mean, again, on the co-curricular side, we're like, how do we embrace AI to help you move way faster? Also, to fail faster. And so can we use AI as this tool or resource that's not unlike what the internet was, but maybe even more powerful, to allow us to be more efficient and quicker, to not spend as much time, but actually get things to a level that you can go actually test it. So that's what we're doing right now. We've created a tool called this ZellBot with Google that allows our students to have to answer some questions about yourself, like why you're the right person, founder fit, what problem do you want to solve, why this is important to you. And then you push Gemini to figure out what the market size looks like. So it's again, like there's some things that you can't just push a button for that you actually have to do the work or you're not going to get the correct answer or you're going to have to put more time into it. So we're trying to find that balance, but I also teach a class called the Modern Music Business where I had the students create an AI song and then do a discussion board with each other. And it was fascinating to see like what was really good and what wasn't in the creative field, like what does not work.
Savannah Peterson
>> Yeah. Lots of emotions surrounding AI in the creative arts for sure. Very interesting. We could have a whole nother show on that debate without question, but I just want to double down a little bit on something you just said. You talked about the agent play that you had done. You were able to do that quite quickly, correct?
Gregg Latterman
>> Yeah. So that was something where, I think it was like last May or June, again, going, are we moving fast enough? And I went to our dean, Dean Matusik, who is incredible and she comes from entrepreneurship as a professor and just said like, "We have a whole big thing that we're doing at Ross with AI, actually with Google." And I was just like, "Can I just do this? There is no right answer. This might not work, but I want this when school starts." And she said, "Go for it." And so we worked super quick with people out of here as well at Ann Arbor, Google, and got this, it's called ZellBot, and got it up and students are using it. And again, is it going to be the best thing in the world better than what we were doing before? I don't know. Right now, it's making our students think and go quicker. And again, we'll probably have to keep iterating it and it will iterate itself obviously, but the best part was instead of taking six months, we took like six weeks.
Savannah Peterson
>> Which is truly impressive, and it helps the students stay up to date. David, what are you doing to keep your students balanced in terms of using these tools for good versus nefarious?
David Jurgens
>> So I think Michigan has great students. I'm very proud of them. I think one of the things that's really made a difference is teaching them of the value of the slog. So I think it's really easy to want to replace yourself.
Savannah Peterson
>> Well, y'all live in these cold winters, so I guess everybody understands the value of some sort of slog.
David Jurgens
>> That's the trudge. Between the snow...
Savannah Peterson
>> Yeah. Now I know. I'm learning. I'm learning.
David Jurgens
>> But the slog of trying to do really hard things that you're kind of struggling through, there's so much that you can gain there.
Savannah Peterson
>> Yeah.
David Jurgens
>> And then once you know that, seeing how to augment those really hard-earned skills. But I do think, I mean, both of the other faculty, using it as an assistant to augment your skills, that itself is a skill that we have to learn. And I think it's easy to have students think that they're doing that, augmenting, and they're really replacing themselves. And so you have to create these teachable moments where you're like, "Actually, I didn't learn that. The AI knew that and I was just not there yet." And then they make this mental switch of like, "Oh, wait, I know how to do this better next time." So making sure that that's baked into the curriculum. It's really hard though. I don't know if we have a great answer yet, but hopefully we iterate fast and...
Savannah Peterson
>> No, but I think what you're saying there is highlighting the human benefit, the human in the loop and the power of that. It's great as a knowledge graph and as a source, we're basically taking research libraries and making them very digestible very quickly, which is important. And that's how we leverage research too. But on the flip side, you still got to do something. Otherwise, it's going to be the most boring paper you've ever read in life or otherwise. And you can always tell with that. I can imagine a lot of the students are maybe a little uncertain or anxious about a very rapidly shifting career landscape right now. What is your advice to them? How are you helping them navigate? David, I'll start with you on this one.
David Jurgens
>> So there's so many different careers that AI touches these days. So it's tough to say, "Do this or do that." I try to tell the students to make sure that they're very comfortable living in this state of rapid change, that you can't just say, "I know X." He's like, "No, I know how to learn X so that the next time something shows up, they're able to pivot and quickly get that skillset." I think also knowing how to make sure that, why would they hire this student and not just replace them with AI? Like what are you bringing to the table and then make sure you can have that skillset. You can talk about that. I'm more than just me, I'm me and the whole team, whatever that team looks like, and making sure they can present themselves to whatever the market is or job opportunity that they want to have.
Savannah Peterson
>> And really embrace that individual sense of spirit. It's not going to be the same, same. The bots are going to do the same, same. It's going to be what we bring that's our little magic fairy dust that makes it cool.
David Jurgens
>> Yeah, what gives you joy in your workplace.
Savannah Peterson
>> Yeah. Yeah. Gregg, what about you?
Gregg Latterman
>> So it actually fits what I really want to do, which is help people embrace an entrepreneurial mindset and think of yourself as an entrepreneur no matter what you do. Whether you go work in corporate America or consulting or build a company, you have to think and act like you are an entrepreneur. And so that fits really well with what's going on today. So how do you make yourself more efficient? How do you make yourself stand out? What creative things can you do that a computer is never going to be able to do, right? And so thinking like that. Again, how good are you with people? How good are you at managing people? Those are things that are not as replaceable. And so instead of being scared about it, which I think most people are excited by it, it's just that you aren't going to just find one thing and stay there. It's like, what's your entry point going to be? And the more knowledgeable you are about using these tools, resources, and iterating as they go will make you more adaptable to where the world is going to be, because we don't know where it's going to be in two years.
Savannah Peterson
>> No, no, we don't. And oftentimes EQ gets kind of pushed to the side in the business and technology world. It's really relevant right now. Your soft skills are going to be what make you totally stand out. How are you telling your students to navigate, Ang?
Savannah Peterson
>> I recommend my students to read a paper. It's called The Computer Scientist as Toolsmith. It's written by Fred Brooks, who was a computer pioneer, and one of my personal heroes. In that paper that was written in the 1990s, he talked about AI. And his viewpoint is that the better way of thinking about AI is to reverse it and think about IA. He calls it intelligence amplification. Think about AI as a tool. If you can build better and better AIs-
Savannah Peterson
>> Oh, I like that a lot.
Savannah Peterson
>> You can always use that AI to amplify your intelligence. So think about IA, how you can collaborate with AI and build tools for other people, whether they're computer scientists, or increasingly, non-computer scientists. How can you use that as a tool instead of to help build better products and tools?
Savannah Peterson
>> Yeah. It's like going from a hatchet to a chainsaw, not removing the person who has to cut down the tree. Chainsaw's not just going to do it. I just pulled that one out. I'm looking at his TreeTown USA shirt and I just had to go with some sort of Arbor pun there. Wow. Really going for it on the pun games. I have one final question for y'all, because I could seriously talk to you all day. I'm fascinated by this. When we do a follow-up episode a year from now, what do you hope to be able to say then that you can't say yet today? Gregg, I'm starting with you since you're entrepreneurial and you got to be fastest.
Gregg Latterman
>> It's helping us create problems or solve problems that we couldn't have solved before because we can go quicker because we've got more resources at our fingertips that we don't need others to help us with. It makes us more efficient. I'm not a good designer, but I can now design. I can take what's in my head and put it on a computer and then put it out in the world way faster. I don't need people to help me do that anymore. So I think we're going to have way more people building companies than we've ever had before.
Savannah Peterson
>> I love that. One of the things that I always wanted to... I'm neurodiverse, super dyslexic, and I struggled to communicate ideas sometimes, and I always just wanted to press print on my brain. I've visually visualized this so many times. If I could just spit it out and you could see it. And AI for me feels like the first tool that I've been enabled with where I really feel like I can, to a degree, at least to an MVP degree, press print on my brain and say, "This is sort of what I'm thinking of and this is where it's going." And I love that you just said that. David, what about you?
David Jurgens
>> I think we're going to see even more uses of AI in all sorts of society. So I think we think about the impact, not just in technology, but like everyday uses, all sorts of AI in smaller places that make it more accessible, more easy to amplify what we do right now. And I'm curious what kind of societal and technical challenges will come with like that increasingly adoption.
Savannah Peterson
>> Yes.
David Jurgens
>> So looking forward to talking about that next year.
Savannah Peterson
>> So much curiosity at that intersection of humanity and technology right now. Ang, close us out with a nice little piece of advice, or future prediction rather.>> Yeah. What I'd be interested in is more discussions on ethical uses of AI. I remember when the internet first came out, there was this joke saying that when you're chatting with someone on the internet, you don't know really who you're chatting with.
Savannah Peterson
>> No one knows you're a dog on the internet.
Gregg Latterman
>> Exactly.
Savannah Peterson
>> I love that joke. Still think about that, actually.
Savannah Peterson
>> And I think we are using AI... AI can hold a real conversation with people now. And ways of using AI as a conversation partner is also evolving.
Savannah Peterson
>> Yes, very much.>> And I think it's important for us to think about how we should treat it as a tool, as an automation tool rather than a real person. And what are the ethical implications of the conversations that we have with AI and so forth?
Savannah Peterson
>> I'm really glad you brought that up because one of my biggest fears as an analyst, honestly, just as a human being right now, is that we're going to make the same mistakes with AI that we did with social media. And we need the regulation. We need ethical AI. We need sound people of judgment making those calls. And if we don't put up the bumpers on the bowling lane now, we find ourselves in an extraordinarily dark situation in a very short period of time. So yeah, one of the things I've noticed that's less in terms of the conversational buzz lately has been the ethical use. Everyone's just, "Oh, here's how I'm making money," or, "This is this tool I'm making," or, "Here's my AI boyfriend." That's not going to cure what ails this very chronically lonely society. I think there's a lot of things that have to go into play there. So I really can't wait to do a follow-up with the three of you hopefully next year, because this has been awesome. Ang, Gregg and David, thank you so much.
David Jurgens
>> Thanks so much.
Gregg Latterman
>> Thank you.
David Jurgens
>> It's been great.
Savannah Peterson
>> This has been a joy.>> Thank you.
Savannah Peterson
>> I hope your mind is moving just as fast as I am after this stimulating conversation here in surprisingly sunny Ann Arbor, Michigan. We're here with our Google Passport to Containers exclusive series. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.
