AI in Academia: Why You Can’t Govern What You Can’t Question

AI in academic research is changing every assumption about governance, integrity and how we assess students. Professor Tony Myers, Professor of Quantitative Methods at Birmingham Newman University, joins me for a wide-ranging conversation about what AI really means for researchers, academics and students. We go from the moment GPT-4 made AI worth taking seriously, through Tony's VALID framework for prompting in research contexts, to how Birmingham Newman redesigned its dissertations to pair a 3,000-word output with a viva. Tony's line from a recent LinkedIn post: "You can't govern what you cannot yet question." That framing runs through everything here. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 Two professors for the price of one 00:24 Birmingham Newman University 01:06 AI in teaching and research 03:56 The GPT-4 turning point 07:00 Governing what you can't yet question 10:32 AI, language barriers and fairness 15:49 Why Birmingham Newman embraced AI 17:47 The AI evidence sheet explained 21:32 The skills employers actually want 22:00 The VALID framework for research 28:08 AI tools for qualitative research 35:37 What AI means for assessment 37:36 Dissertation redesign and the viva 41:43 Muay Thai and AI judging 46:52 Where AI in higher education heads 50:42 Skills that will still matter 🧰 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN How one UK university teaches students to use AI with a transparent, markable evidence trail What the VALID framework is and how it produces verifiable outputs in AI-assisted research Why AI detection tools are unreliable and what sensible governance looks like instead How Tony's team used AI to analyse qualitative data and compared it against human-coded themes Why a shorter dissertation combined with a viva can reflect student understanding better than 15,000 words alone How model temperature and parameters affect reproducibility in AI-assisted academic work What skills will still matter when AI is handling most of the analytical heavy lifting 🧠 WHO THIS IS FOR Academics, researchers, doctoral students and university leaders trying to respond to AI practically rather than just reactively. Also valuable for professionals in learning and development who want to see how higher education is wrestling with assessment — and what approaches are actually working. 💡 BEYOND ACADEMIA: WHERE THESE IDEAS APPLY The principles Tony describes don't stay inside universities: Verifiable AI outputs matter just as much in business reporting, legal analysis and policy work The AI evidence sheet is a model any team can adapt to maintain a transparent AI audit trail Reflexivity and bias-checking in qualitative research maps directly onto AI-assisted decision-making in organisations Tony's voice bot for research interviews points to where customer insight tools are heading Prompting for checkable outputs, not just plausible text, is a discipline that transfers to any professional context 👋 ABOUT ME I'm Professor Paul Noon. Former British diplomat, former Deputy Vice-Chancellor, now an independent AI adviser and Non-Executive Director helping boards and leadership teams put AI to work properly. 💬 OVER TO YOU What's your institution or organisation doing about AI governance? Has it moved past blanket bans yet? Drop it in the comments. I read every one. A like makes a real difference here. YouTube uses it as a signal to push this conversation to more people who need it. 🔔 Subscribe for weekly AI guidance for non-technical UK professionals. 🎓 Interested in getting genuinely confident with AI? I'm building a course called AI Confident, designed to help you use AI tools with clarity and purpose, not just copy and paste prompts. Join the waitlist here: https://www.theprofessor.info/ai-conf... Subscribe to the weekly AI briefing: https://www.theprofessor.info/newsletter 🔗 Try Consensus free or Pro with my link: https://get.consensus.app/theprofessorai 🔗 More AI tool tutorials:    • ⚡ AI for Everyday Life: Productivity, Ease...   Use the Free Prompt Builder - https://www.theprofessor.info/resourc... (you will need to log in) The link to register and join the 30-day free trial. Experience Collective at: https://white.space/request-a-free-trial Use Beehiiv to create your own newsletters: https://www.beehiiv.com/?via=paul-noon You receive a 14-day trial + 20% OFF for 3 months. Nord VPN: https://go.nordvpn.net/aff_c?offer_id... Opus Clips: https://www.opus.pro/?via=24b63c Get started with SEOWriting AI: https://seowriting.ai/?fp_ref=profess... (Coupon Code for 25% off - PROFESSOR25) Want to start a YouTube channel - I would start here https://vidiq.com/TheProfessor Connect with me: Twitter/X: @TheProfessorAI Blog: https://www.theprofessor.info/ Get all the Prompts - https://www.theprofessor.info/resources #AIResearch #AcademicIntegrity #AIinEducation #AIGovernance #HigherEducation