The announcement follows an executive order that President Donald Trump signed in February to increase AI research and development. The order calls for more training in the form of apprenticeships, skills programs and STEM education, with a focus on computer science. Georgetown joins at least two other U.S. colleges with big plans in AI. In October, MIT revealed its new, $1 billion College of Computing, which will integrate AI, computer science and data science throughout the institution. And in February, the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, in Albany, announced a $2 billion investment from IBM to create an AI research center on the campus.

By reading and paying attention to present-day signals from our future, we can best make sense of the higher education IT world in 2038. In 1992, I was in a meeting at Apple Computer and was asked if I wanted to see the next "killer technology" the company would soon release. My Apple colleague left the conference room and came back to unveil the Apple Newton, a handheld device (sort of) that Apple was calling a "Personal Digital Assistant" (PDA) and that featured handwriting recognition. I flipped back the gray metal lid and tried the stylus, writing to my wife, "Dear Pat." My writing, converted to text on the fly, came back as "Deal Pot."