Question 1

How can educators use AI clones to scale their teaching?

Accepted Answer

_Creating an AI version of yourself to teach online courses at scale._

> I created the Lutz-Clone, an AI version of myself designed to teach my online certificate about AI with eCornell. This clone looks like me, but more importantly, it contains my knowledge and teaching style.

Source: [AI In Education — Up-level Your Teaching With AI By Cloning Yourself](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/03/31/ai-in-educationup-level-your-teaching-with-ai-by-cloning-yourself/)

Question 2

How did you replace yourself with a bot in your AI and product course?

Accepted Answer

_A virtual instructor keeps course content fresh and current._

I launched a public certificate program on product and AI at Cornell's Johnson School. The course is about 100 hours long. To keep the content up to date, I replaced myself with a bot, a virtual copy of myself. This allows the course material to stay current without requiring me to manually update everything. It's an example of how AI can maintain educational content in a scalable way while I focus on other work, including running my Gen AI platform for e-commerce.

— [Disrupting Traditional Banking, with Colin Walsh](https://www.lutzfinger.com/transcript/2025-05-22-disrupting-traditional-banking-with-colin-walsh/) · _The Keynote on AI_

Question 3

How does AI enable better information retrieval than traditional search?

Accepted Answer

_LLMs transform how we access and summarize information across all domains._

Large language models can read language, extract and summarize knowledge, and create new data based on what you're asking for. The internet democratized data, but data still needs processing and summarizing into chunks we can act on. LLMs make this chunking more effective. It's like how you can watch a two-hour movie and then concisely tell a friend the content. An LLM can do this for you, providing compact, concise information retrieval. This isn't just one size fits all. In education, for example, you might have many explanations for a math problem, and the question is which explanation works best for a specific student.

— [Cherry's Investment Thesis on AI](https://www.lutzfinger.com/transcript/2024-07-19-cherrys-investment-thesis-on-ai/) · _The Edge_

Question 4

How is AI changing education?

Accepted Answer

_What AI does for and to students, teachers, and curricula._

> AI agents will transform every industry — and one industry I know well is education. So, how will AI agents change how we teach and learn? To explore this question, I created the Lutz-Clone, an AI version of myself designed to teach my online certificate about AI with eCornell.

— [AI In Education — Up-level Your Teaching With AI By Cloning Yourself](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/03/31/ai-in-educationup-level-your-teaching-with-ai-by-cloning-yourself/) · _Forbes_

Question 5

How is Europe positioned in the global AI race compared to the US and China?

Accepted Answer

_Europe's talent, market size, and research create competitive advantages._

Europe is not badly positioned because it has important strengths. There are more engineers per capita in the EU than in the United States or China. Europe has a very large and rich single market, bigger than the US with more people. Europe is also very strong in research with a very high number of publications and excellent universities. The European population is on average very well educated and therefore likely to uptake technology. These factors give Europe a solid foundation for AI development and adoption.

— [AI in the EU, with Lucilla Sioli](https://www.lutzfinger.com/transcript/2025-04-24-ai-in-the-eu-with-lucilla-sioli/) · _The Keynote on AI_

Question 6

What does the eCornell AI certificate cover?

Accepted Answer

_The five-course program structure._

> While AI can enhance scalability, human involvement remains essential. What do students in my eCornell certificate tell me after the course? AI is great at summarization and coding. An AI can help being a dynamic checklist and memory.

— [Overhyped: Manus From Monica — AI Made In China](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/03/10/overhyped-manus-from-monicaai-made-in-china/) · _Forbes_

Question 7

What is Runway at Cornell Tech and how does it support PhD entrepreneurs?

Accepted Answer

_A two-year paid fellowship helping PhDs turn research into companies._

Runway is an entrepreneurship fellowship at Cornell Tech designed to help PhDs commercialize their research. The program accepts five fellows per year and provides a two-year paid fellowship specifically to commercialize technology that you ideally developed during graduate school. It's a structured way to transition academic research into viable commercial products, giving you financial support and time to build your startup while maintaining ties to Cornell Tech's ecosystem and resources.

— [Founder Coaching: Tips for your AI Journey](https://www.lutzfinger.com/transcript/2024-07-26-founder-coaching-tips-for-your-ai-journey/) · _The Edge_

Question 8

What is the book Ask, Measure, Learn about?

Accepted Answer

_Topics covered in the O'Reilly book._

> **Publisher:** O'Reilly Media **Published:** Feb 1, 2014

— [Ask Measure Learn](https://www.lutzfinger.com/book/) · _Book — Ask, Measure, Learn_

Question 9

Why did you decide to teach AI and create educational programs at Cornell?

Accepted Answer

_Understanding AI enables ethical deployment and smart business decisions._

I've been teaching at Cornell for over 10 years because AI is impacting all of us, everywhere. We saw deepfakes of Taylor Swift and Russia using AI to meddle in U.S. elections. My aim is to explain AI to everyone because only if we understand it can we deploy it ethically and use it in ways that make money for businesses. I wrote a book and started these activities alongside my real job because we need to understand AI to use it responsibly and effectively.

— [AI, Clones, Deep Fakes, and Neural Networks](https://www.lutzfinger.com/transcript/2024-09-12-ai-clones-deep-fakes-and-neural-networks/) · _The Keynote on AI_

Question 10

Why does Cornell use an AI Teaching Assistant?

Accepted Answer

_What an AI TA actually does in a Cornell course._

> The challenge is clear: educational institutions must equip both students and educators with the tools and skills to harness AI effectively. In my course, students now use AI co-pilots to analyze data, build machine learning models, discuss business strategies, and explore ethical challenges. Many students were hesitant at first, sticking to manual methods. But with training on prompting and understanding AI behavior, they became…