The race for productive research in universities has reached a fever pitch, with institutions chasing products over concepts. This shift is particularly evident in the field of artificial intelligence, where the focus has veered from the humanity and socio-political reality of sustainable AI to the blinkered quest for the most advanced 'product'. The recent incident at Galgotias University, where a faculty member 'claimed' a Chinese-made robotic dog as designed by the university's Centre for Excellence, highlights the disturbing trend of universities prioritizing profit over creativity and academic integrity. This phenomenon is not unique to India; in the US, the University of Chicago has recently diverted significant resources from deep research to startup ventures and the financialization of applied research, with detrimental consequences for its humanities and languages programs. The disconnect between academia and industry is glaring in India, with the IITs playing a greater role in the industrial and corporate world through their elite alumni network than through research. The race for research products has reached its maddest intensity around artificial intelligence, and academics Arvind Narayanan and Akash Kapur have offered some necessary caveats for India, suggesting focus on enabling infrastructure, governance, and citizen-friendly innovation over frontier models or the vanity of greater data centers. While AI seems to be on an unstoppable trajectory, there is still plenty we can do on the human and socio-political front to address AI-enacted wealth and inequity, political and social representation in image and language, and the tender, vulnerable spaces of intimacy and relationships. These are the spaces where we should focus our education, not on making claims about the most advanced robots and faking them.
