Smartacus today launches a Substack that makes it easy for readers to subscribe to four channels of AI-augmented content that digital communicators Dan Forbush and Bill Walker are producing in an informal collaboration with Skidmore College faculty and students.

At different points in their long careers in academic public relations, Forbush and Walker served as Skidmore's chief communications officer. Forbush started developing Smartacus as a student-powered creative agency in 2015 when he was still the college's Executive Director of Communications. Walker was the college's PR chief during the Joe Palamountain era in the late 70s and early 80s.

Friends and professional colleagues for more than 40 years, Forbush and Walker are now exploring a collaboration with Skidmore to develop the Smartacus Neural Net, a hybrid research and storytelling system that augments human insight with the support of large language models.

Forbush and Walker have hired two Skidmore students to mine the knowledge of Skidmore faculty through Zoom interviews they record and transcribe with Otter, aggregate in NotebookLM, and edit in ChatGPT. 

"Our method reduces to a couple of hours a process that, prior to AI, would have taken Bill or me at least ten hours to laboriously write -- and the quality is higher," says Forbush. "We specialize in the rapid mining of expert content." 

These are the Substack channels on which students are publishing, with Forbush and Walker overseeing a human/AI hybrid editorial process: 

Dominic Giordano, a 2025 Skidmore graduate, isn’t asking whether artificial intelligence will change education. He knows it already has. What he’s asking is far more consequential: What is college really for in a world where information is instant, omnipresent, and often machine-generated?

As one of the first students to pilot the Smartacus Neural Net, Giordano is helping define a new model of learning—one that embraces AI not for shortcuts, but for its potential to deepen understanding and amplify student agency. 

“The intellectual and spiritual growth that occurs in a college setting—when students are encouraged to think critically, explore ideas freely, and cultivate their own voices—is equally essential,” he writes. “That kind of freedom cannot be downloaded or automated. It must be lived and learned.”

He believes AI must be understood as a tool in a long tradition of tools—from the abacus to the internet—whose value lies in how they’re used. “Used thoughtfully, AI can support this kind of learning rather than undermine it,” Giordano says. “It’s in the long tradition of human beings using tools to amplify our capacity to learn.”

But to do so, he argues, we must address the social pressures that distort how students engage with technology. “The temptation to use AI as a shortcut may not be laziness—it may be desperation,” he explains. “We are curious by nature. That instinct for learning doesn’t vanish—it gets stifled when survival takes precedence.”

Dominic’s work with Smartacus demonstrates that thoughtful AI integration is not only possible—it’s necessary. Through projects such as GPS-triggered audio tours and long-form stories for Civic Conversations, AI and the Human, and AI at Work, he models how students can remain authors, not merely operators, in a world saturated by generative technology.

“Just as previous generations embraced books, calculators, search engines, and online databases,” he writes, “we now have a new tool—one that can enhance our work if used with care and intention.”

A Systems Thinker for an AI-Driven Age

Prairie Gunnels, a Skidmore sophomore, brings a clear-eyed pragmatism and systems-oriented perspective to one of the most pressing questions of our time: How should we teach and learn in the age of artificial intelligence? As one of the first two students to pilot the Smartacus Neural Net—a civic journalism and educational innovation platform—Gunnels is helping shape a new model of learning that embraces AI not as a shortcut, but as a stimulus for creativity, reflection, and agency.

“AI is the most significant technological leap since the introduction of the Internet,” Gunnels says. But rather than panic or retreat, she insists on preparation. “Banning AI in classrooms or pretending it doesn’t exist isn’t the solution,” she writes. “All that does is put students and our country at a disadvantage.” For Gunnels, the real crisis is not the presence of AI, but the absence of meaningful guidance. Most students, she argues, have never been taught how to use AI in a way that actually supports learning.

Her vision is rooted in equity, evolution, and global awareness. “Countries that are incorporating AI into their curriculum and degrees are already ahead,” she notes, pointing to Italy’s Università Politecnica delle Marche as a model of forward-thinking education. Without similar innovation in the U.S., she warns, we risk falling behind.

At the same time, Gunnels is attuned to the structural pressures students face. She sees the reliance on AI not as laziness, but as a survival response to an inflated system where higher degrees are increasingly required just to get in the door. “Many are focused on getting through college as quickly as possible,” she says, “because they see education as a stepping stone to employment, not an experience for learning.”

But Gunnels sees a better way. With proper instruction and ethical framing, AI can help students organize their thinking, spark new ideas, and engage more deeply with their work. “If students were shown how to use AI more effectively,” she says, “they would be more likely to approach it as a tool to help them develop their ideas and support writing skills.”

In her work with Smartacus, Gunnels is modeling that very approach—producing original content that blends fieldwork, research, and AI-assisted synthesis. She is part of a growing movement that insists students remain authors, not operators, in a digital age.

“Embracing and integrating AI into education is no longer optional—it’s necessary,” she concludes. And with Prairie Gunnels helping to lead the way, that integration may yet be humane, just, and transformative.