Mark Blythe approaches AI and higher education through history, cultural analysis and speculative design rather than conventional policy advice. His imagined universities feature students attending as avatars, academics judged by algorithmic tribunals and assessment based on prompt logs rather than finished writing. These scenarios are deliberately provocative, using fiction to expose assumptions about scholarship, academic work and the university itself. Readers wanting implementation checklists may find the experimental approach frustrating, but that is not the book’s purpose. It offers something rarer: a method for thinking about futures before they harden into institutional practice. Imaginative, unsettling and well suited to leadership retreats or faculty discussion groups.