AI Acceleration in Action: How Higher Ed Is Balancing Innovation vs. Risk

Artificial intelligence is transforming higher education — from classrooms to research labs — but with innovation comes risk. How can universities protect sensitive data, meet compliance obligations, and still foster discovery? In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, WWT Higher Ed Principal Advisor Janet and Principal Cybersecurity Consultant for AI Bryan Fite share how one leading university is tackling AI governance and building guardrails that empower rather than restrict. Their insights reveal why higher ed is a proving ground for responsible AI adoption — and why every industry should be paying attention.

Support for this episode provided by: Infoblox

More about this week's guests:

Bryan Fite is a committed security practitioner and serial entrepreneur, who uses Facilitated Innovation to solve "Wicked Business Problems". Having spent over 25 years in mission-critical environments, Bryan is uniquely qualified to advise organizations on what works and what doesn't. He has worked with organizations in every major vertical throughout the world and has established himself as a trusted advisor. "The challenges facing organizations today require a business reasonable approach to managing risk, trust and limited resources, while protecting what matters."

Bryan's top pick: Shadow AI: The Threat You Didn't See Coming

Janet McIllece serves as a Principal Advisor for World Wide Technology with a focus on higher education. Her specialties include strategy design and aligning technology solutions with business architecture, institutional priorities, processes and operations. She uses human-centered innovation approaches to help stakeholders align on a vision and successful implementation path forward by advising, guiding and collaborating on how various paths do - and don't - translate to WWT's technology solutions.

Janet's top pick: Using AI to Elevate the Student Experience in Higher Education 

The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions.

Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.

The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.

Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.