For a while, my speaking page said I was an AI expert. Or something close to it. The language was carefully hedged — “navigating AI,” “harnessing the future,” that kind of thing — but the positioning was clear: hire me if you need someone to talk to your team about artificial intelligence.

I was not wrong, exactly. But I wasn’t entirely right either.

I want to be honest with you upfront: I didn’t figure this out quickly or gracefully. I figured it out in a faculty meeting that went sideways, after months of work that should have gone better, wondering how something so obviously good for students had become so contentious so fast.