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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Marshall University President Brad Smith said AI is here and we have to embrace it or be left behind.
Marshall University President Brad Smith
Smith said at last week’s Focus Forward event in Morgantown future generations that use AI will have to learn how to ethically use the capabilities offered by the new technology.
“In today’s world we’re going to have to recognize that AI will be here just like the internet in the 90s,” Smith said. “We’re going to have to prepare our students to ethically and responsibly use it and also how to effectively help them expand their capabilities without giving up critical thinking in the process.”
Focus Forward is an annual event that brings a diverse crowd together to look at how emerging technologies change the economy, how we work, how we learn, and policies we live by. The 2026 edition, entitled “Focus Forward: Minds and Machines,” took a deep diave into AI and how it will transform the way we do business and learn at all levels.
West Virginia Public Education Collaborative Executive Director Donna Hoylman Peduto believes we have to resist the tendency to be the last to pick up new tech. With that in mind, she was glad to see nearly 50 of the attendees came from the education field. This is a clear opportunity to establish an early foothold in AI development and application.
“I feel like usually it’s evenly distributed, but more so toward business,” Peduto said. “All the panels focused on education and I feel like that was the common thread of the day”
Frank Vitale
Morgantown-based Forge Business Solutions President and CEO Frank Vitale said he sees opportunities to harness AI in the classroom to meet the individual student needs more directly and efficiently. Those applications could also extend to a variety of businesses as well.
“What we’ve never been able to do in education is provide individualized education,” Vitale said. “AI will help us build that bridge so we can teach and, in some cases, train the workforce.”
Ethical use of the platform will be a challenge as AI is integrated more and more into business and education. Smith said humans will always have the opportunity to design and train the AI systems with standards appropriate for the application.
“We can start to look for things that may detect if AI has been used inappropriately, but that’s where human judgement comes in—I call it the human advantage,” Smith said. “It will have cognitive capability, but we are the ones that will bring judgement, ethics, and responsibility.”
Higher education will likely be the proving ground for many AI applications across business and education. As technology is developed, it could then be improved by the different users at all levels.
“I think our K through 12 schools need to become incubators as well,” Smith said. “This is going to be a literacy we need to build into all students going forward because it will be part of our world as we know it.”
The event concluded with the presidents of the two major universities in the state taking questions submitted by students across the state. Brad Smith from Marshall and Michael T. Benson addressed the future of higher education with the implementation.
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Focus Forward event focuses on AI
