Harnessing the power of artificial intelligence

On an early visit to the University of South Carolina, Amit Sheth was surprised when 10 deans showed up for a meeting with him about artificial intelligence. Sheth -- the incoming director of the university's Artificial Intelligence Institute at the time -- thought he would need to sell the deans on the idea. Instead, it was them pitching the importance of artificial intelligence to him. "All of them were telling me why they are interested in AI, rather than me telling them why they should be interested in AI," Sheth said in a 2020 interview with the university's Breakthrough research magazine. "The awareness of AI was already there and the desire to incorporate AI into the activities that their faculty and students do was already on the campus."