Julia Khrebtan-Horhager, Colorado State University - AI in Higher Education: A Friend or a Foe?

Should AI be a friend or foe in higher education? Julia Khrebtan-Horhager, professor of communication studies at Colorado State University, considers this question from a teaching perspective. Faculty Bio: Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager is Professor of Communication at Colorado State University and Director of Education Abroad programs in Europe. She is the recipient of three International Communication Association Top Paper Awards and the CSU College of Liberal Arts Best Teacher Award.Her research focuses on intercultural communication, political science, international relations, global conflict, and media studies.She is the author of two books, Communicating the Other across Cultures and Migrant World Making, and has published widely in leading academic journals and edited volumes.She is multilingual and works across academic and public-facing contexts in Europe and the United States. Transcript: Scriveners. We no longer remember who they were, because of the printing press. We barely remember typewriters, because of computers. And now… artificial intelligence.This is not just another technological shift. It is a rupture.Emerging research shows that AI generates knowledge at unprecedented speed and scale. It also brings risks: misinformation, confirmation bias, hallucinations, social isolation, and surveillance.Among students, we already see deskilling. Writing without assistance – an essay, a letter, even an argument – is becoming less common.From an intercultural perspective, AI is not neutral. It learns from datasets shaped by unequal histories, power structures, and global representation gaps, and reproduces them.In classroom experiments, students ask AI to describe global conflicts or demographic groups, then compare outputs with lived narratives. The results are striking: AI “knowledge” often becomes stereotype, simplification, or erasure. AI does not merely reflect the world: it reshapes it. Yet, there is another side.AI can expand creativity, accelerate discovery, refine language, and deliver answers in seconds. What once took hours or weeks is now instant. It generates ideas, translates languages, and structures thought.Knowledge is no longer only accessed: it is produced in real time. This may be the most technologically empowered generation we have seen.So, is AI a dark knight or a savior? A friend or a foe?It is both. And neither.It is inevitable.We cannot stop it, but we can decide how to engage it. The task is not to fear or embrace blindly, but to guide, question, and train it.Because the real question is not whether AI will change the world: it already is.It is whether we will master it, or be mastered by it.So… we must learn to train our AI dragons. Read More: [University of Michigan Press] - Communicating the Other across Cultures This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.academicminute.org