Notes

Summary Woolf is launching a new US-based collegiate university to help American colleges avoid decline by integrating into a shared administrative infrastructure that preserves their identity while dramatically improving sustainability, academic quality, and relevance in an AI-shaped world Why this matters now Universities predated the invention of the printing press, but they thrived by embracing it. The printed word created a new architecture for how ideas were created, distributed, governed – and learned by students. The printed word also defined a new world of work, and universities prepared students for that world. ...

This essay was first given as a speech to a class of incoming students in May 2025. Your university has no idea what to do about AI, and they have no plan. They have a fake plan about getting a plan. That’s it. On their plan, they don’t know what will happen with your life. So, you’re in charge now. Actually, you always were. You must know what you want, if you are to be successful in university today. Ask yourself, what are the fundamental capabilities that you want for yourself? What are you unwilling to outsource or delegate? AI and robotics will make it possible to outsource almost everything. ...

My mental model of where we stand relative to deep history can be summarized as compounding progress. I assume we are the beneficiaries of all the progress that precedes us - not only each evolutionary unlock for life, but each hard won cultural victory over hunger, coldness, sickness, wild animals, superstition, plumbing, and car accidents. The ‘past’ is an answer to the questions you ask. Here I ask questions that classify the world and easily move from one category of compounding growth to another as if these were continuous. This is would require a lot of work to defend in an academic context, but, roughly, I think it is the right thing to do, and nitpicking is a distraction. ...