{"id":536127,"date":"2026-03-21T05:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T05:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/536127\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T05:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T05:23:10","slug":"university-of-california-faces-biggest-question-of-our-lifetime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/536127\/","title":{"rendered":"University of California faces \u2018biggest question of our lifetime’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"University<\/p>\n

University of California\u2019s chief investment officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher said this week that the school system, including the University of California at Berkeley, faces \u201cprobably the biggest question of our lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yalonda M. James\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n

The University of California\u2019s chief investment officer\u00a0Jagdeep Singh Bachher said <\/a>this week that the school system faces \u201cprobably the biggest question of our lifetime\u201d as it grapples with changes wrought by artificial intelligence on its students\u2019 job prospects and risks to its $214 billion investment portfolio.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest thing that is a surprise to me and the team in the last 60 days is how fast we\u2019re all waking up to realize that AI is actually a risk,\u201d he said at a\u00a0UC board of regents meeting in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to start figuring out, what does the future of every one of our 300,000 students at the University of California look like? That in my humble opinion is probably the biggest question of our lifetime. And you don\u2019t have six years to figure it out. You need to figure that out sooner than later because things are moving at a pace that are alarming to us on a day-to-day basis,\u201d he said, adding that his daughter is preparing to go to college and her future job could be at a company that “doesn\u2019t even exist today.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For instance, AI can replace a software company\u2019s product, leading to significant stock price drops, rather than the tech boosting their business, he said. Some public software company shares are down 20% this year, he noted.<\/p>\n

When asked if\u00a0UC was overinvesting in AI, Bachher said the university can\u2019t afford to miss out on AI\u2019s growth, even if there is a bubble. He equated the AI boom to Amazon\u2019s rise, which included years of losses until it became a dominant and profitable company.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf you sold your Amazon stock too early \u2026 you never took advantage of this growth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He noted that Nvidia expects $1 trillion in chips revenue opportunity through 2027, which is unprecedented.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re not managing this money for a year or two,\u201d but rather with a 30-year horizon, he said. \u201cI fully expect even if there is a correction of some sort and things come down in value, having the patience to be able to ride this out over the long run is what is important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bachher said his team must \u201cdissect our portfolio asset-by-asset and ask the question, what could be at risk\u201d of obsolescence like a \u201chorse and buggy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He called AI \u201cthe biggest technological revolution at the fastest pace \u2026 let\u2019s not get caught with legacy assets that might lose their edge very quickly because everyone gets surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI has helped make\u00a0Bacher\u2019s own team more efficient and may cut the need for as many workers in the future, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He joined\u00a0UC 12 years ago and inherited a team of 50 people managing around $80 billion. Now he has 49 people managing $214 billion, and he predicted that could drop to 35 people in 10 years.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWeeks and months of work (are) being replaced by minutes and hours literally by just loading up a box of data into Claude or\u00a0OpenAI,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Baccher acknowledged that he doesn\u2019t have many answers to AI\u2019s future impact, but reiterated that the university system needs to recognize the many negative scenarios and try to prepare students accordingly.<\/p>\n

Even with AI\u2019s impacts,\u00a0Baccher said one of the \u201cmost important skills\u201d for students is learning financial literacy, which UC promotes through free courses at the UC Investment Academy. \u201cThere\u2019s no AI agent that is going to do a job for you, that\u2019s going to give you money that you can then put into a bank account,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"University of California\u2019s chief investment officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher said this week that the school system, including the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,2356,526,74,17345],"class_list":["post-536127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-california","tag-education","tag-technology","tag-university-of-california"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}