CAPE TOWN, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- The World Academic Summit 2026 opened in Cape Town, South Africa, on Tuesday, focusing on the future of higher education in the age of artificial intelligence (AI).
Held in Africa for the first time, the summit is organized by Times Higher Education (THE) and jointly hosted by the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of Bristol.
It runs from Tuesday to Thursday, gathering 500 delegates and 100 speakers from universities, governments, research organizations, businesses and civil society organizations around the world.
Under the theme "Knowledge, justice and futures: Universities in the age of intelligence," discussions on the opening day centered on how universities can respond to the rapid development of AI and its growing use by students and academics.
UCT Vice-Chancellor Mosa Moshabela said that the university had moved away from using AI detection tools to penalize students and was instead focusing on helping them develop the skills to use AI appropriately.
"Initially, our academics were penalizing students for using AI in their assignments and so forth and we ended up using tools that would detect AI and then would penalize students for this," Moshabela said. "After we developed our own framework for AI, we decided that we are going to turn off those AI detection tools. And the idea is to allow students to use AI, not penalize them but rather focus on supporting them on how to use AI."
University of Bristol President and Vice-Chancellor Evelyn Welch said attitudes toward AI varied across cultural contexts, while universities also faced a need to establish shared standards.
"There is quite a different set of anxieties that we can see depending on the cultural contexts. But that doesn't mean that we don't all have to come up with some common standards," she said.
THE World University Rankings 2027 will be released on Wednesday, with the latest edition covering higher education institutions in 118 countries and territories. ■