What AI did to my Stanford college class
by Theo Baker · Australian Financial ReviewTheo Baker
May 20, 2026 – 3.34pm
At Stanford University, where I am a senior, tech chief executives are something like rock stars. When the Nvidia founder Jensen Huang showed up to give a guest lecture late last month, students mobbed him. They offered up their laptops and personal workstations, desperate for a signature from a kingpin of the artificial intelligence era. Last year, speaking to the same class, Huang gave out shining $US4000 graphic cards with his name autographed in gold ink – the ultimate dorm room status symbol.
Stanford has always been a haven for aspiring techies, but recent events have taken the school into uncharted territory. AI is everything. We talk about it at the dining halls and in history classes, on dates and while smoking with friends, at the gym and in communal dorm bathrooms. Nearly all of higher education has been overtaken by this technology, and Stanford is a case study in how far it can go. For the past four years, my classmates and I have been the subjects of a high-stakes experiment.
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