Rothman says he has dabbled with AI tools, like Chat GPT, using it routinely to cross-check his work, like when developing a strategic plan.
“I will go back and ask AI, ‘OK, what did I miss?’ and sometimes I get hallucinations, but sometimes I get ideas that I may never have thought of, and I can apply critical thought to those ideas and to see whether or not they would work,” Rothman said. “I’m fascinated by the technology. I think it has all kinds of potential, but it also has some downsides to it, and we have to acknowledge those downsides. Ultimately, I see it as a tool.”
His own approach to artificial intelligence mirrors what’s been happening at the UW system’s 13 universities in recent years, with the rollout of new AI majors, hiring more faculty in the field, and partnerships with industry companies, such as Microsoft.
“People may have said that when the Internet was coming out that ‘This is a passing fad’ and it certainly turned out not to be,” Rothman said in an interview Monday with the Wisconsin State Journal. "... In some sense, artificial intelligence is the Internet on steroids, so to think that it’s going to be a passing fad, I think, is a mistake. Now, with that said, we have to be careful and understand its limitations.”
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that jobs in software development will increase by nearly 18 percent from 2023 to 2033, which is faster than other occupations. But a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study based on a simulation tool found that AI could take over nearly 12 percent of jobs in the U.S. labor market.
In response to the wave of AI, the UW system is developing governance policies for students, faculty and staff for responsible use of AI, Rothman said. The policies would provide guidance to campuses on how research or information is handled if it was put into an AI model for public use.
“That we are not going to compromise on,” Rothman said. “We are going to maintain confidentiality, and we’re going to maintain privacy. That’s another guardrail that we’ll look at.”
The UW system doesn’t plan to replace instructors and professors with AI, he said, but implementing it as a teaching tool is an ethical guardrail that will be discussed.
“That human connection, that human touch is going to be absolutely important to education going forward,” Rothman said. “Can it be augmented with AI? Yeah, I think it can at some level, but it’s not going to drive it at the end of the day.”
AI MAJORS BOOM
Programs centered around artificial intelligence are booming across the UW system’s 13 schools.
Next fall, classes will start in UW-Madison’s newest college centered around AI. The approval of the College of Computing and AI, which is the first new academic unit at UW-Madison since 1983, breaks the School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences (CDIS) out of the College of Letters and Science.
Campus leaders say the new college will elevate the visibility of existing programs and position UW-Madison as a leader in AI and computing and could open up doors to industry partnerships.
This fall, UW-Eau Claire launched two AI majors, and UW-Whitewater in fall 2026 is replacing its AI-focused computer science major track with a bachelor’s degree in AI.
The university says graduates of the program will have the skills for high-demand careers in information technology fields, such as AI engineers and machine learning specialists.
MORE TO COME
Other AI-related projects are also underway.
UW-Milwaukee last year opened an AI innovation lab with Microsoft to boost collaboration between new startups, researchers and educators.
In 2024, UW-Madison announced its Wisconsin Research, Innovation, and Scholarly Excellence (RISE) initiative, which launched with the hiring of 50 new AI-focused faculty members.
At UW-Madison, its Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies is leading 14 new faculty research projects with a $1.5 million partnership with QTS Data Centers about environmental effects and the pros and cons of data centers.
QTS pledged $50 million toward community initiatives in Dane County while it sought approval to build a $12 billion data center campus north of Madison, near DeForest. The developer withdrew from the data center project at the end of January, but the money for the university was not dependent on the build moving forward.
© 2026 The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
