What are your impressions of returning to CTU after thirteen years?
Mixed. On one hand, a lot of things here haven't changed. CTU as an institution is stable, similar things are being taught, and many scientists I used to know are now in more senior positions. What has changed, though, is the leadership. A new rector has arrived, and with him, a call for change. I think that's also why I am here; I feel an opportunity to move CTU forward.
What exactly will you be doing at CTU now?
I agreed with the rector that I would take on the position of Chief AI Officer. This means I will be responsible for AI adoption and essentially everything related to artificial intelligence. At CTU, that spans a whole range of areas.
What areas are those?
In the field of artificial intelligence, CTU conducts world-class research. There are laboratories and centers focused on machine perception, robotics, and algorithmic research that belong to the absolute top tier, not just in the Czech Republic and Europe, but globally. This is an area that doesn't need my help. We have capable people doing great research. A unique asset is also the ELLIS Unit Czechia, which is an association of top AI researchers in the Czech Republic and part of the European Network of AI Excellence.
However, I see a huge opportunity in the adoption of artificial intelligence in research fields that do not primarily deal with it. I believe in interdisciplinarity. When people who understand AI join forces with those who understand research in a given domain, progress happens. Together with the industry, a fund to support interdisciplinary research was established here, which explicitly promotes this—two researchers from different faculties team up and conduct research together. There is a vast amount of unmined knowledge lying there.
The university also teaches, of course, and education is already being disrupted by artificial intelligence. It's great to see how some teachers have faced this head-on. Course curricula cannot be re-accredited that quickly, but it is possible to start teaching differently within existing programs, create a different type of assignments, and push students further. An example is Pavel Kordík, who created the Research Coach platform. It teaches master's students how to write scientific articles, some of which are publishable at world-renowned conferences. The AI doesn't generate the papers, but it coaches the students, providing fast, critical feedback. That is a great synergy between the teacher, the technology, and the student.
On the other hand, I was part of discussions in the so-called Teachers Club, where submitted bachelor's and master's theses full of "AI slop" are being dealt with. At first glance, you can tell they were written by AI; they lack coherence and contain errors. Teachers don't know what to do with them. If I were to give the topic of my own master's thesis to current models like Fable or Mythos today, they would write a text that would likely pass the Turing test. If we placed those theses in front of a professor, it would be hard to recognize what was produced by a human. Perhaps only by the fact that the human text will contain mistakes, whereas the AI text will not. I want to integrate AI into teaching so that both the teacher and the student are better off.
What specific changes will need to be made in the field of AI?
I divide the changes in the field of AI into four pillars: infrastructure, research, teaching, and administration. Today, the rule is that whoever has access to powerful AI models, knows how to use them effectively, and has the money to pay for them, can do things better, faster, and on a larger scale. We don't have that to such an extent here. We need to gain access to AI, learn how to use it, and have the money for its operation. If we don't do this, we will fade away and cease to be relevant. Scientific outputs will shrink, and students will be frustrated because we will be teaching them using old methodologies. Then they will join a company, and they will be asked: "How come you don't know what Agentic Engineering is? Don't program in Java, nobody cares about that anymore."
Students must prepare for a new era. It's not about giving everyone AI and telling them their job is done. We must still teach them how to think. Learning how to think is still the same—it hurts and it takes effort.
Another shift is towards autonomy in science. Researchers at top institutions are already using AI to derive new, more efficient algorithms. This will leave its mark on the scientific process. We want to create a group for autonomous research with the aim of mastering this process, but at the same time keeping humans at the center. The university's goal is to produce scientific papers, but the idea that a platform will autonomously generate articles for the university is short-sighted. We need researchers who are capable of understanding and thinking about the research. This also has a deeper societal implication—when AI is able to do de facto everything in twenty or thirty years, the question of how to keep humans relevant will be just one degree more important than in autonomous research. That's why I like this topic.
Can you already compare the pace in the private sphere and at the university? What are the specific differences?
Even in business, the pace varies; plus, it's only fair to compare institutions of similar size. For example, Adastra has two and a half thousand people globally, while CTU has twenty thousand students and three and a half thousand employees. The university will obviously come out of that comparison looking slow.
However, it is interesting to compare the university a year ago and now. The rector comes from a business background, so he understands that we need to act fast. The only mental block is in the minds of people who say, "This is how it has always been done here." Granted, there is no one-dimensional business mindset here (where processes are optimized for KPIs and profit), which I find appealing, but on the other hand, we must approach things efficiently. Otherwise, we won't stand a chance in the world, and both our research and our students will cease to be relevant. World and European universities are moving forward very quickly, and we are in a competitive environment.
Does that mental block stem from being used to old processes and a reluctance to change, or is it a fear of artificial intelligence? As it is often said, for instance, that it will take our jobs?
It is a completely natural fear of uncertainty and change. I am empathetic toward these concerns and want to dedicate maximum time to explaining things. I can understand the fear regarding AI, but it is difficult with people who resist change as such and want to preserve old bad habits. The rector is excellent at communication and at transforming this fear into excitement about the opportunity. Our task in leadership is to show people that change is an opportunity for them and that there will always be a place for those who keep moving forward. There is truly a lot of work to be done; it won't be finished for another fifteen years. Things will need to be done differently, better, faster, and more efficiently, but ideally with greater joy, ease, and without paperwork and frustration. If we succeed, it will be better for all of us to work here.
Will it be possible to avoid artificial intelligence in everyday life at all within a ten-year horizon?
I have faith in humans and human nature. Whenever artificiality pushes too far, it subconsciously starts pulling a person back to sitting by a campfire, staring into the flames, hiking in the mountains with a backpack, or riding a bike. There is a lightness of being in that. We can also see it in how people are returning to local things, growing tomatoes with no economic return, or buying eggs from neighbors. I visit my sister in the Jizera Mountains, where I buy eggs from a neighbor, we meet in the pub in the evening, and walk with the kids across the meadow into the forest. There is no AI there, there is barely even a signal, and we feel good there. People will increasingly seek this out as a contrast to the AI world.
My hypothesis is that AI will change the world a lot. The technical and business world will become even faster and more rational. But humans have their own dynamics; they have the rhythm of the day and the year, not the rhythm of hours, minutes, and seconds. Although technology can push humans to higher speeds due to economic pressure and geopolitical competition, the classic, original part of society will be valued, and people will gladly return to it. It will create a dual type of life: one rural, mushroom-picking, gardening, and close to nature, and the other urban, technological, and capitalist. People will switch between them. I need such a balance myself.
AI is talked about a lot in the world of technology and business, but how can a completely ordinary person who stands outside these spheres benefit from it?
I see the main benefit in how easily a person can learn with AI. For people who want to learn their whole lives, it is an incredible tool. With AI on a phone or computer, I can start learning what I need in a personalized way. I have learned a huge number of things myself over the past two years. When I don't understand something, I write: "I have a university education in computer science, so be advanced in your explanation there, but regarding philosophy, I have a high school education, so be slow with me there." I calibrate my tutor, and it explains a mathematical proof, the relationship between Indian religions, or a socio-economic event precisely at my level.
It is a tool comparable to the printing press. Previously, a person had to go to the library and read twenty books, but now everything is distilled into a model, and you have the information at the snap of a finger. Search engines like Google are not as effective because they are not personalized in depth.
People could use AI to verify fake news or analyze how realistic politicians' claims are. However, many people resist it; they prefer their garden and chickens, which I don't blame them for. I am starting to deeply appreciate the non-technical piece of life myself, where I don't let technology in and I am just human.
We talk a lot about growth and competition. How do you perceive the ethics of this growth and the ecological or social impacts of AI?
I am not a fan of exponential growth because we live in a finite environment, and it will eventually consume us. On the other hand, growth is natural to humans; we are curious and creative, so non-growth goes against our nature. Managing a society towards growth is easy—people are being hired, and there is a constructive atmosphere. A decline means layoffs and uncertainty.
Every year, we consume the Earth's renewable resources in roughly four to six months, so we need to become at least twice as efficient in our consumption of resources. The climate has gotten out of hand; geopolitically, things looked better ten years ago than they do now. And into this comes AI, which consumes a huge amount of resources, is not ideal climate-wise, and represents a massive competitive advantage geopolitically, so there is a major race going on for it.
Furthermore, capitalism dominates the Earth, which is profit-driven and produces negative externalities that it doesn't always pay for. Profit from AI is starting to concentrate within a small subset of people. To take it to an absurdity: in the Czech Republic, instead of ten people, only one person will pay taxes, and the rest of the work will be done by nine AI agents. But they don't pay taxes. The company will pay for tokens, and the entire revenue will land in America or China, where they will (perhaps) tax it. An economic imbalance occurs. International cooperation is decreasing, and the egos of civilizations are growing.
The question is what to do about it. Either one can look at it apocalyptically and enjoy the last few years or generations, or accept it as a suboptimal environment in which one still tries to do their best with hope and faith in humanity. This relates to Great Filter theories—whether we can survive ourselves as humanity when we put weapons in our hands that can destroy us. We have lived with nuclear weapons for fifty years, sometimes on the edge, but we are still here. Whether we can last another five hundred years and how we will manage with AI are existential, as yet unresolved questions. Warning about the risks and pointing them out is fair—even if there were a ten percent chance that AI would destroy us, we must deal with it.
But I am an optimist. I have faith in humanity and believe that we will somehow make it. Even if it will be rough and somewhat difficult.
Photos by: Kristýna Dvořáková
