{"id":48758,"date":"2026-03-11T09:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T13:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newamerica.org\/?post_type=insight&p=48758"},"modified":"2026-03-11T09:02:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T13:02:36","slug":"the-ai-lab-next-door","status":"publish","type":"insight","link":"https:\/\/www.newamerica.org\/insights\/the-ai-lab-next-door\/","title":{"rendered":"The AI Lab Next Door"},"author":16,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","issue_tax":[78],"topic_tax":[64,204],"program_tax":[],"project_tax":[229],"person_tax":[608,506,607],"podcast_show_tax":[],"insight_type":[3795],"fellowship_tax":[],"award":[],"class_list":["post-48758","insight","type-insight","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","insight_type-in-depth"],"acf":{"details":{"hero_type":"large-image","abstract":"Why universities are valuable AI partners for local governments, and how to build and leverage those relationships.<\/span>","subheading":"How local colleges can help cities translate artificial intelligence into public value.","read_time":"","watch_time":"","podcast_player":"","apple_podcast_link":"","spotify_podcast_link":"","podcast_link":null,"listen_time":"","youtube_id":"","":null,"featured_image":48760,"add_image_caption":false,"caption":"","pdf_version":null,"helper_taxonomies":{"issue_tax":[78],"topic_tax":[64,204],"program_tax":false,"project_tax":[229],"person_tax":[607,608,506],"fellowship_tax":false,"event_type":false,"location":false,"insight_type":[3795],"award":false,"podcast_show_tax":false,"person_type":false,"demographic_key":false,"survey_topic":false,"organization":false},"media_inquiry":false,"media_inquiry_title":"","media_inquiry_email":""},"page_layout":[{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_key_takeaways","_acfe_flexible_toggle":null,"component_key_takeaways":{"heading":"Key Takeaways","intro":"","list":[{"content":"AI is driving a rare alignment of incentives across sectors.<\/b> Colleges are seeking clearer public relevance, governments require technical capacity, and communities are demanding more responsive institutions\u2014creating conditions for collaboration not seen in decades.<\/span>"},{"content":"Billions of dollars in new investment are accelerating university AI capacity.<\/b> Early civic pilots\u2014from criminal justice partnerships at <\/span>Tulane<\/span><\/a> to production-ready tools developed at <\/span>Northeastern<\/span><\/a>\u2014demonstrate how higher education can translate research into tangible public value.<\/span>"},{"content":"Local leaders should look to college partnerships that strengthen regional economic growth.<\/b> Higher education is uniquely positioned to develop local talent pipelines and support long-term economic competitiveness.<\/span>"},{"content":"Despite this momentum, durable partnerships remain uncommon.<\/b> Structural differences in culture, timelines, and incentives\u2014along with the decentralized nature of universities\u2014continue to limit large-scale collaboration.<\/span>"},{"content":"The window for shaping these relationships is real but narrowing.<\/b> As institutional practices harden and capital investments lock in, communities that fail to engage higher education risk missing a critical opportunity to influence how AI strengthens democratic capacity.<\/span>"}],"":null,"anchor_id":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_wysiwyg","_acfe_flexible_toggle":null,"component_wysiwyg":{"add_background_color":false,"content":"

Introduction: Bridging an AI Divide<\/h2>\r\nAs governments and communities across the United States struggle to make sense of artificial intelligence, one of the most capable\u2014and underutilized\u2014partners is often hiding in plain sight: local colleges and universities. Much of the public conversation about AI focuses on big tech companies or federal regulation. Meanwhile, far less attention has been paid to how higher education institutions can help cities and nonprofits deploy AI to serve residents and strengthen public trust.\r\n\r\nAcross the United States, higher education institutions are already governing AI internally, experimenting with operational use cases, and absorbing unprecedented investment to build technical capacity. And as the appetite for an AI-trained workforce blossoms, local colleges are now a prime pipeline for talent. At the same time, local governments and nonprofits are just beginning to respond to and translate AI\u2019s promise into public value.\r\n\r\nThis asymmetry presents a clear gap: Colleges and universities are increasingly adept at deploying AI, but the connection between local communities and higher ed remains underdeveloped.\r\n\r\nThis brief argues that AI has created a rare institutional opening to bridge the divide. Colleges are seeking clearer public relevance, governments require technical capacity, and communities are demanding institutions that are more responsive and trustworthy. Local leaders from governors to nonprofit executives who recognize this alignment\u2014and act on it\u2014can shape how AI strengthens democratic infrastructure rather than allowing it to evolve according to purely academic or commercial priorities.\r\n

Ground Truth: What\u2019s Actually Happening<\/h3>\r\nMost cities have not historically developed or maintained deep or strategic relationships with nearby colleges and universities. This \u201ctown\/gown divide<\/a>\u201d persists today: Local governments focus on service delivery while universities concentrate on teaching and research. To many civic leaders aiming to collaborate with a local college, campuses appear decentralized, opaque, and difficult to navigate.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s this distance that makes the current moment more significant. AI is forcing institutions across sectors to reassess their roles, capabilities, and responsibilities. For the first time in decades, incentives are converging around collaboration as both local governments and colleges are feeling increased pressure to prove their relevance quickly.\r\n\r\nThe reality is that most colleges already<\/em> have a civic designation. The majority of local higher ed institutions are 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations with tax-exempt status. This fact is often overlooked because many universities exhibit private-sector tendencies, but legally and structurally, they share more DNA with public-serving institutions than is commonly assumed. That status is receiving renewed scrutiny under the Trump administration, prompting many university leaders to demonstrate more measurable public value.\r\n\r\nTo be clear, this brief does not advocate \u201cmaking a deal\u201d between cities and local campuses. Rather, it emphasizes a strategic posture: Many universities are actively searching for ways to elevate their civic mission. Local leaders should treat this not as rhetoric, but as an invitation\u2014one that may not remain open indefinitely. If cities do not work with higher ed now to build AI capacity, workforce pipelines, and governance norms, these areas may default to private-sector priorities instead of public ones.\r\n

Higher Ed: The Local AI Power User<\/h3>\r\nIn many communities, higher education has quietly become the most active AI enterprise. Within weeks of the public release of ChatGPT in late 2022, colleges and universities were already grappling<\/a> with implications for teaching, research, and administration, often before clear regulatory signals emerged. While other sectors hesitated, the academy began building governance structures, issuing guidance, and testing use cases.\r\n\r\nHigher education, in many respects, had little choice but to engage with AI. Students became immediate power users, placing unprecedented pressure on the core academic enterprise. Administrators are heavy users as well: A recent national workforce survey<\/a> reported 94 percent of higher ed staff and faculty use AI on a regular basis, with these tools deployed to streamline admissions review, assist with research administration, and improve internal workflows. Unlike sectors that could afford to observe from the sidelines, universities faced immediate operational disruption that demanded governance<\/a>, policy formation, and experimentation.\r\n\r\nAt most four-year institutions, and virtually every research university, provosts and senior academic leaders quickly emerged as AI policymakers. Task forces, faculty senates, and cross-campus working groups were mobilized to define appropriate uses and establish institution-wide guidance. A United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) survey<\/a> of academic leadership shows that roughly two-thirds of UNESCO-affiliated institutions across 90 countries now have formal AI policies or are actively developing them. This early institutional adaptation has produced something civic leaders should recognize immediately: practical governance experience.\r\n\r\nUniversities are also erecting extensive new curricular pipelines. As of 2025, more than 500 AI-related degree programs<\/a> exist across U.S. higher education, spanning undergraduate majors, graduate degrees, minors, and concentrations. Additionally, universities shape regional labor markets. They credential talent, build cross-disciplinary governance expertise, and operate on time horizons longer than electoral cycles. That institutional permanence gives them influence over how AI capability diffuses into local economies.\r\n

Billions for AI Experimentation<\/h3>\r\nThe scale of investment flowing into university-based AI activity further reinforces this trajectory. In addition to new courses and credentials, there is a gold rush of external capital that is accelerating institutional AI capacity. As one professor told us, \u201cThese days, all you have to do is put AI in front of your proposal, and there is a good chance you will receive support.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhile there is not yet a comprehensive list of these corporate, philanthropic, and government investments, we tallied a number of the major awards supporting this experimentation, including: $500 million<\/a> for a new research center at Harvard; $200 million<\/a> to support AI cancer research at Stanford; $100 million<\/a> for the University of Virginia\u2019s Darden Business School; $500 million<\/a> for a collaboration between State University of New York (SUNY) university centers and state schools; and $1 billion<\/a> from Google for AI training across U.S. higher education institutions and nonprofits. The University of Michigan is also advancing a roughly $1.2 billion<\/a> high-performance computing and AI research facility in partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory, supported by a mix of university, state, and federal resources.\r\n\r\nMuch of this funding targets large scientific challenges such as precision medicine and genomics. Yet a smaller\u2014and strategically consequential\u2014share is oriented toward civic applications. Universities are not merely studying AI\u2014they are operationalizing it.\r\n\r\nAs documented in our report, Making AI Work for the Public<\/em><\/a>, some of the most ambitious civic AI efforts to date have often involved college partners. At Tulane University, faculty and students working through a community-engaged AI center have partnered<\/a> with local nonprofits to advance criminal justice reform, transforming a traditional service-learning requirement into a vehicle for policy-relevant AI work. At Northeastern University, the AI for Impact program<\/a> has produced more than a dozen production-ready tools in six-month sprints, co-designed with public partners including the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Georgia Tech\u2019s Partnership for Innovation<\/a> has applied AI to regional challenges ranging from rural agriculture to economic development. And at the University of Michigan, researchers funded by the National Science Foundation collaborated with<\/a> the City of Detroit to apply AI to urban planning and climate resilience.\r\n\r\nThese efforts share several characteristics: They are problem\u2011driven, low\u2011fanfare, and grounded in real public needs. They also demonstrate AI\u2019s unique ability to surface value quickly, rebalance power between institutions and communities, and change the nature of civic collaboration. Such partnerships can be more systematic rather than exceptional.\r\n

Where Hype Diverges from Reality: The Implementation Challenges<\/h2>\r\nIt is important not to overstate higher education\u2019s progress on AI implementation and stay clear-eyed about the challenges that remain. Most activity remains concentrated at well-resourced research universities with strong engineering and data science capacity. Community colleges have engaged less, reflecting longstanding resource constraints.\r\n\r\nAnd faculty adoption also varies widely by discipline. Many scholars, in fact, remain in an exploratory phase, uncertain about how deeply the technology will reshape their work. Structural barriers, including differing timelines, incentives, and definitions of success, do not disappear simply because a new technology arrives.\r\n\r\nThe fundamental divides between higher ed institutions and local governments that still must be overcome to translate AI into public value include:\r\n