EP278 AI Governance in Higher Ed with Dr. Eugene Chan

Most organizations govern AI the same way cities govern speeding. They set a rule, then punish people who break it.

Dr. Eugene Chan thinks that's the least interesting tool available. He's a behavioural scientist - founder of the consultancy Behavieural and Professor of Business at Tyndale University - and his argument is that punishment is a lagging response to a problem you could have designed out.

His analogy is a speed camera versus a speed bump. Both reduce speeding. The camera does it by fining you after the fact, and it needs maintenance forever. The speed bump does it by making the behaviour physically inconvenient, and you install it once. One punishes. The other just makes the wrong thing harder to do.

Apply that to shadow AI, or to the human-in-the-loop review that everyone claims to have and nobody actually does, and the conversation changes shape entirely.

Host Susan Diaz and Eugene also get into why universities are harder to govern than corporations, why a single institution-wide AI rule can't work when the philosophy faculty and the accounting faculty need opposite things, why the white-font trick some professors are using is a symptom rather than a solution, and what a provost should map before writing a single line of policy.

Susan and Eugene are building a governance mapping engagement for higher education institutions together. If that's you, get in touch.

About Dr. Eugene Chan Dr. Eugene Chan wears two hats. He's the founder of Behavieural, a consultancy that uses behavioural science to help organizations solve trust challenges - AI adoption, customer loyalty, brand and PR. He's also Professor of Business and Marketing at Tyndale University, and has taught at TMU as well as in Australia and the United States. His PhD in management is from the Rotman School.

What we get into (00:37) Two hats: behavioural science consultancy and the business school

(01:34) Policy versus governance, and why even the consultants can't define it clearly

(02:43) Susan's working definition: policy is the best practice, governance is the daily behaviour

(03:00) Confusing access with literacy - why handing out licences isn't adoption

(04:14) AI as the internet 25 years ago, and why there's no chief internet officer