Teaching National Security Policy with AI

Summary

The videos embedded in this post are best viewed on steveblank.com International Policy students will be spending their careers in an AI-enabled world. We wanted our students to be prepared for it. This is why we’ve adopted and integrated AI in our Stanford national security policy class – Technology, Innovation and Great Power Competition. Here’s what we did, how the students used it, and what they (and we) learned. Technology, Innovation and Great Power Competition is an international policy class at Stanford (taught by me, Eric Volmar and Joe Felter.) The course provides future policy and engineering leaders with an appreciation of the geopolitics of the U.S. strategic competition with great power rivals and the role critical technologies are playing in determining the outcome. This course includes all that you would expect from a Stanford graduate-level class in the Masters in International Policy – comprehensive readings, guest lectures from current and former senior policy officials/experts, and deliverables in the form of written policy papers. What makes the class unique is that this is an experiential policy class. Students form small teams and embark on a quarter-long project that got them out of the classroom to: select a priority national security challenge, and then … validate the problem and propose a detailed solution tested against actual stakeholders in the technology and national security ecosystem The class combines multiple teaching tools. Real world – Students worked in teams on real problems from government sponsors Experiential – They get out of the building to interview 50+ stakeholders Perspectives – They get policy context and insights from lectures by experts And this year… Using AI to Accelerate Learning Rationale for AI Using this quarter to introduce AI we had three things going for us: 1) By fall 2024 AI tools were good and getting exponentially better, 2) Stanford had set up an AI Playground enabling students to use a variety of AI To...