The man betting everything on AI and Bill Belichick

Lee Roberts met me Friday morning at the University Club of San Francisco, hours before his football team lost to Cal in heartbreaking fashion — a goal-line fumble, as Bill Belichick’s costly test at Chapel Hill said little about the University of North Carolina.

But UNC Chancellor Roberts doesn’t know that yet. Right now, he’s in California to talk about artificial intelligence, which is both forward-thinking and also — I’d guess — a welcome distraction from much of what’s going on at the 235-year-old school.

“Nobody’s going to tell [students after they graduate from college]’Do the best you can, but if you use AI, you’re going to be in trouble,'” Roberts told me, leaning into his central thesis about preparing students for the real world.

Roberts joined me in other meetings around town with AI companies as UNC decided to make AI its north star. It’s a business bet, really. Roberts spent three decades in finance, most recently as managing partner of a private investment firm, and served as state budget director under Republican governors. He taught budgeting at Duke as an adjunct but had never worked in academic administration before becoming UNC’s interim chancellor in January of last year, a post he held eight months later.

Never mind that the university just lost 118 federal grants totaling $38 million as part of a massive effort by the U.S. federal government to shut down 4,000 grants to 600 institutions. Never mind that last year more than 900 people signed a statement saying they would not recognize Roberts as chancellor when he was appointed, calling the process a political “inauguration” rather than an inquiry. Never mind that Belichick’s much-hyped return to football is currently a 2-4 train wreck, writing about the team’s dysfunction has become regular fodder for sportswriters. Roberts is focused on the future.

At UNC, Roberts explained, there is a spectrum between faculty who are “leaning forward” with AI and those who “have their heads in the sand.” That’s the diplomatic phrase for what’s clearly a culture war going on in faculty lounges across UNC and — it’s probably safe to assume — other schools around the world. While one UNC professor is assigning more research than students could do without AI (“much closer to a real-world scenario,” Roberts says), others are treating chatbots like anabolic steroids. If you use them, you are cheating.

“We have 4,000 faculty members,” says Roberts, as a cable car rumbles past the open window next to our table. “And they pride themselves, as they should, on their independence and autonomy in the way they teach their classes.”

Sounds a bit like code for this: tenured professors can’t be forced to do anything. So Roberts is creating “incentive-based programs” to move the ball forward, such as promoting one of the school’s deans to the role of vice provost for AI at the university. That person, Jeffrey Bardzel, has been a professor for more than 20 years and has “experience both in technology and the humanities,” Roberts said, adding that Bardzel is “exceptionally well-positioned to help the faculty as a whole come up to speed.”

UNC is already ahead on other fronts. The University is the biggest development so far announced this month That it is merging two schools – the School of Data Science and Society and the School of Information and Library Science – into one still-named entity with AI studies at the center of the Venn diagram.

UNC is not alone in betting big on AI. at least 14 colleges Now offers bachelor’s degrees in AI, and universities like Arizona State University have made headlines for integrating AI tools across disciplines.

Still, the school’s newly created library has worried some science students, who wonder what will happen to their degrees. Report In The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s independent student newspaper. At least one faculty member also complained anonymously in a statement to the paper, saying Roberts pushed for the school without “any idea” what it would entail, adding that “the careers of faculty, staff and students at both these schools are being sacrificed for Roberts’ arrogance.”

Roberts tells me the implementation will be collaborative, not top-down. He is also clear that the move is proactive, not reactive. “It’s not about stopping anything,” he says. “This is not primarily a cost-savings move,” he continued, a possible nod to those lost federal research dollars, which account for 3.5% of UNC’s overall research funding.

Roberts doesn’t minimize the devastation of losing grants – “In many cases, [people] lose their life’s work,” he admits — but he’s quick to note that 3.5% is “well within our average annual difference.” He adds that he’s “spending a lot of time talking to policymakers and lawmakers in Washington about the tremendous good that federal research funding represents. We need to be especially careful now, when there is so much uncertainty around [these dollars] That it’s really changing the fundamental structure of how big research universities are funded.”

Of course, this raises questions about wealth as a whole. While UNC’s AI push is the topic du jour, I like the $10 million the school is paying Bill Belichick annually. Five year contract Signed back in January. I’m from Cleveland, I tell Roberts. I remember when Belichick cut Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar, a hometown hero. The city never forgave him.

Roberts is ready for it. College sports are changing rapidly, he said. Every peer institution spends at least as much on football; Many spend more. Football drives revenue for 28 other sports. UNC just won its fourth national championship in women’s lacrosse, its 23rd in women’s soccer. Nothing happens without football money.

“If only we had hired someone else and we stayed [down some games]Everybody’s going to say, ‘Hey, man, you could have been Bill Belichick,'” Roberts offers.

In reality, the prevailing narrative about Belichick isn’t just about wins and losses. Even if, in the end, that’s exactly what it’s about, numerous outlet Published the story Describe the chaos Inside the program, players, parents, coaches and administrators all paint a picture of a legendary NFL coach whose style doesn’t translate to college kids.

But Roberts “isn’t making decisions based on a few news stories,” he says. “Coach Belichick, in my view, has done a really good job integrating with our campus,” Roberts said. He shows other teams playing. He sends pizza to friends on Saturday nights. He grew up on a college campus – his father was a Navy coach.

A few hours after our conversation, UNC would lose to Cal if they lost wide receiver Nathan Leacock. Control of the ball Just as he’s running into the end zone for what would be the game-winning touchdown. I can only imagine the immediate reaction in Chapel Hill.

My sense is that Roberts will pull it off. He can never be forgiven for not having a traditional academic background, but he also can’t afford to care that it offends some people. I note that the 900-person petition takes issue with the fact that, among the top 50 universities, Roberts is the only leader with no experience in higher education administration. D application ran in The Daily Tar Heel, which criticized Roberts’ chancellorship.

“I don’t think it was 900 students,” Roberts corrected me. “I think it was 900 people, whether they were students, faculty, staff, or just people in the world who signed an online petition.”

I ask how he felt about the whole episode. “No matter what your background was before you came into this type of job, you have a lot to learn,” says Roberts. If you were a provost, you knew nothing about “the business or finance or budget or political or operational or real estate aspects of the university.” If you come from business, you need to learn the academic side.

It’s a reasonable point. The modern university chancellor is part CEO, part diplomat, part fundraiser, part sports executive. Perhaps, no one comes with all the necessary skills. “I think there’s always going to be a learning curve, regardless of what you’ve done before coming into this type of job,” Roberts says.

What strikes me about Roberts is that he seems relatively bored. Federal funding cuts are within normal limits. Belichick hires a wait and see situation. For some faculty’s resistance to AI, it’s a puzzle to solve.

He’s also making big bets just as higher education is being squeezed. Federal funding is uncertain. Declining birth rates threaten future enrollment. With the value of a college degree in question, more students find graduation the only job available to them Low paying gigs They could have landed in college without spending a staggering amount. Now AI threatens to upend the entire model.

But Roberts sees opportunity where others may see crisis. He also thinks the window of opportunity is smaller than anyone imagines. “The challenge with AI is that we have to work relatively quickly, and we have to collaborate across academic disciplines,” he says. “And those are two things that universities, historically, are not particularly good at.”

Whether Roberts’ game plan works remains to be seen. What is clear is that he is betting on moving slowly and preserving tradition rather than moving fast and shaking things up. Highly ranked UNC

“We’re going to try to make Carolina the number one public university in America,” he tells me

It’s an ambitious vision, and as he delivers it, for better or worse, he sounds a lot like a Silicon Valley CEO.

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