Professor Sid Dobrin helps lead national conversation on AI in higher education

When ChatGPT was released in 2022, many academic institutions went into panic mode. Luckily, the University of Florida was prepared. 

“We were fortunate at UF because we had already been investing in the AI initiative for several years,” said Sid Dobrin, Ph.D., chair and professor of English and founding director of the Trace Innovation Initiative in the Department of English.

Dobrin quickly became a sought-after voice on the national stage. He has testified before the U.S. House Committee on Education & Workforce about the role of AI in higher education, urging institutions to focus not on fear but on transparency, documentation, and preparing students for workplaces where AI literacy and data security are now top priorities.

His rise as an expert on the subject began in February 2023, when he was invited to speak at a UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences event on ChatGPT. 

“When they posted that talk online, things just sort of exploded for me,” Dobrin said. 

Invitations poured in from universities around the country, and Dobrin spent much of the following year traveling to help campuses understand what generative AI meant for teaching and learning.

A proactive approach

As institutions debate how to respond to generative AI, Dobrin has worked to provide clarity. He partnered with Broadview Press to publish “AI and Writing,” a textbook now entering its second edition (ready for Fall 2026 adoption), and developed a free national resource guide for higher education leaders. That guide, distributed widely to university administrators, was designed to demystify AI tools and start campus-wide conversations about using them responsibly.

“In that first year after ChatGPT, most campuses were reacting out of fear, asking me to talk about how to catch students or how to prevent use altogether,” Dobrin said. “My real objective was just simply demystifying what these tools are and how they work, because a lot – particularly the public reaction in newspapers and mass media – a lot of that reaction was based on actually not knowing what these tools do right.”

Since then, the national conversation has shifted from panic to planning, Dobrin said. Universities are now asking bigger questions about infrastructure, faculty development and student readiness. The latest edition of his guide emphasizes not only what AI is but also what resources campuses need to prepare for its future.

“So now, when you look at data and you look at what employers are looking for from new graduates, communication skills are still the No. 1 skill,” Dobrin said. “But the No. 2 skill set now is AI literacy.” 

Helping UF lead the way

At UF, Dobrin collaborates with the AI² Center, the Center for Teaching Excellence and the Blue Sky Task Force to guide the university’s AI strategy. He leads workshops for faculty across disciplines, helping them experiment with ways to incorporate AI into assignment design, research and the curriculum.

For Dobrin, the debate over AI in the classroom is part of a much longer story about how education adapts.

“We said the exact same thing about Wikipedia. We’ve said the same thing about the calculator. We’ve said the same thing about the ballpoint pen, the chalkboard, the printing press, you name it,” Dobrin said. “Any time there is a tech innovation that affects education, everybody pauses and says, ‘This is ruining education.’ It’s not ruining education; it’s changing education.”

Today, Dobrin emphasizes that building a culture of trust around AI use is just as important as understanding the technology itself.

“So my No. 1 sort of best practice is always going to be transparency and documentation,” he said. “That, to me, is the basis for all of this. That’s where we can start talking about responsible use.”