Good evening. We talk a lot around here about artificial intelligence spending. Tech companies are pouring billions into data centers, investors are nervous and the White House wants a piece of the chip industry underpinning it all.

But the country’s elite universities are splashing out on AI too, even as professors fight off the chatbots writing their students’ papers. That’s where we’re starting off in today’s newsletter. I hope the Bruins fans reading this aren’t too upset that I called USC “elite.” Keep reading for more on Trump, SpaceX and pet custody battles. — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor

The offices of USC’s new Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence still kind of looked like a building site when Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino visited in June — there was scaffolding and lots of bare rooms.

“Some people haven't moved in yet,” said the school’s director Gaurav Sukhatme as he showed us around a lab for physical AI, filled with robotic arms.

“Those two robot arms are using modern sort of techniques to learn how to collaborate with each other to do bimanual tasks,” he said.

The new school recombines some existing programs within engineering and adds new tracks: a dedicated AI major and minors for non-STEM students to apply the tech in disciplines like art or history.

“We have a very project-driven curriculum, which allows us to refresh the projects that the students do as part of their degree programs, and we keep changing those projects and updating them,” said Sukhatme.

But moving at the speed of AI isn’t really what universities are built for. And the state of the art is expensive. Training one of today’s advanced models is estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

“One of the things a university is really good at is posing questions not about what's happening today, but about what might happen a decade from now,” he said. “It is having the freedom to think about entirely new ways of doing things.”

It also means having the freedom to keep humans at the center of that inquiry, according to Shri Narayanan. He runs USC’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab, which uses AI to analyze patterns in human “signals” to tackle big clinical questions. Researchers at SAIL study beat boxers to understand how vocalization works to help preserve it in cancer patients, and identify early signs of autism or depression when treatment can make the biggest difference.

“For me, humans are at the center of everything, right? For humans, by humans,” said Narayanan.

But AI that can infer details about our health, mind or identity carries real risks, as well as real benefits.

“Can we do it in the right way? And this is not something just computer scientists can do,” he said, noting these questions demand expertise from clinicians, social scientists, even philosophers.

It’s this kind of cross pollination USC is aiming to foster with its focus on applying AI across disciplines.

Disney inherited incredible wealth from her grandfather, Roy Disney, who was Walt Disney’s brother and business partner. But even though her extraordinary family name has led to extraordinary finances, the questions Disney has spent her life navigating might feel pretty familiar to you.

Questions like, what do we owe other people? What happens when your values are at odds with your family, or the institutions you were brought up to protect? On that last point, Disney told “This Is Uncomfortable” host Reema Khrais there’s a reason she kept her famous name.

Starting next year, unmarried couples in Illinois will be able to go to court and fight for custody of their pets based on finances, living arrangements and so on. The state’s divorce courts already ruled on shared pets, but dogs like Rosie slipped through the cracks. Chicagoan Tameer Siddiqui fought to prove she was better equipped to take care of her ex-fiance’s puggle after their engagement ended, but ultimately had no legal rights to the animal. The new legislation, “Rosie’s Law,” will change that.