- October 02, 2026
- By John Tucker
Amid widening worries about the perils posed by the rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence, universities may hold the key to advancing not just more powerful systems, but ones that actually serve human needs, University of Maryland researchers told hundreds of business and tech leaders on Thursday.
"We do have history and an amazing record of putting people first," Balaji Padmanabhan, director of UMD’s Center for AI in Business, said at The Washington Post’s AI Edge Summit.
Held at the newspaper’s D.C. headquarters, the event focused on AI’s breakneck development, hitting on topics ranging from cybersecurity and global defense to the future of work. White House National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) and U.S. Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.) were among the panelists at the event, sponsored by UMD and the AI search-engine company Perplexity.
AI has ripped through the headlines in recent weeks, causing what feels like peak anxiety. On Tuesday, more than two dozen tech leaders met with President Trump to discuss possible regulations of their AI products. That came on the heels of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for a slowdown in development. In several incidents this year, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence reportedly went rogue, hacking and trying to break into government and university websites without being told.
“AI is one of the most consequential and complex technologies in our history,” Jeffrey D'Onofrio, Washington Post publisher and CEO, said in his opening remarks, adding that “the intersection between Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., has never been more important.”
A session titled "The Grand Challenge of Human-Centered AI” featured Padmanabhan, Dean's Professor of Information Systems at UMD’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, and Fabrizio Cariani, professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Humanities. They cut an interesting pair on stage: a business professor who addresses AI in business contexts and a philosopher who explores meaning, rationality and agency.
But the odd-couple vibe was an example of how university scholars from different backgrounds collaborate to tackle complex challenges through fierce scrutiny, Cariani said, pointing to an interdisciplinary course he codeveloped called “AI and the Human Experience.”
“There are engineers, there are humanists, artists, there are people from social sciences—it’s almost like a sandbox of what a future work environment could be,” he said, adding, “I think we also have a mission to advance the public good, which in this case means ensuring that this technology is to the benefit of humanity.”
UMD has been in the forefront of AI for more than 50 years, innovating in fields including machine learning, natural language processing and computer vision. The university continues to shape the future of AI, with 200-plus faculty members who study and teach AI and more than 200 courses spanning 50 departments. It’s introducing new bachelor’s degrees exploring the technical and human dimensions of AI, and in 2024 launched the Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute at Maryland (AIM), focused on responsible and ethical technology to advance the public good. A groundswell of recent research initiatives, meanwhile, have used AI to tackle issues ranging from dementia risk to plastic waste to safe arctic voyages.
During the UMD panel, moderator Luiza Savage, editorial director for WP Intelligence, asked audience members paying college tuition to raise their hands, as she lifted her own, and asked the professors how to ensure that robots won’t take away their children’s future jobs.
Padmanabhan said that the critical thinking taught in the business school can protect grads in the workplace. “The higher-order skills that we're teaching are, 'How do you make decisions in complex environments?'"
In an era where many college humanities departments are shrinking, Cariani suggested that AI could spur a renaissance, calling it an exciting time for philosophers, poets and social science scholars.
“Sometimes I think of this AI conversation as the largest humanities seminar ever, happening on a global scale,” he said. “Everybody's talking about what it means to be human, what it means to be intelligent, what it means to be creative.”