Owning Your AI: A Day in the Life of a Vice-Chancellor vs the Risks of Outsourced Data

Owning Your AI: A Day in the Life of a Vice-Chancellor vs the Risks of Outsourced Data

In recent months the question has shifted from whether university leadership should use AI, to who owns it, who controls it, and how transparent its use is. In this piece I set out how things could work and how far wrong they can go through the lens of a Vice-Chancellor (VC) with a university-owned AI, contrasted with the Australian National University’s (ANU) recent experiences of outsourced data and consultancy.

A Day with an AI Agent You Own

Universities are beginning to wake up to the fact that artificial intelligence is not simply another tool to adopt but a question of ownership and control. If the technology that underpins every decision is outsourced, so too is the institution’s future. To imagine what ownership looks like, picture a day in the life of a Vice-Chancellor whose university runs on its own AI agent—secure, transparent, and embedded across the organisation.