Eight-week program brings together students at UC Berkeley and IE University to build functioning AI-enabled systems while developing the human judgment and accountability needed to guide their use.
San Francisco/Madrid, October 2026 — Students at UC Berkeley and IE University will collaborate across the Atlantic this fall in [YOU] on AI + X, an eight-week technology immersion focused on building, evaluating and governing AI-enabled systems.
At UC Berkeley, the program brings together CITRIS and the Banatao Institute faculty and students from across disciplines to explore not only what artificial intelligence can build, but how people can exercise judgment, accountability and leadership as AI takes on increasingly complex tasks.
The program was designed by Ikhlaq Sidhu, dean of the IE School of Science & Technology and a senior fellow at CITRIS, and Edo Segal, CTO of Napster and serial entrepreneur. Beginning in October, participants at Berkeley and IE University will meet simultaneously from their respective campuses, working in parallel cohorts to turn ideas into functioning AI-enabled systems.
Sidhu and Segal designed the program to move beyond simply teaching students how to use AI tools. Participants will learn to design AI workflows, evaluate outputs, make informed decisions and determine where human judgment and accountability must remain.
“Neither students, companies, nor their employees can afford to merely use AI; they will need the ability to ‘direct intelligence’ and architect ‘AI factories’ to solve complex problems. Uniquely, this course offers both new skills and a new set of mindsets which are necessary to work effectively with AI,” said Sidhu.
“Every student will leave with a working system, but the real deliverable is harder to see: a clear answer to what their own [YOU] on AI looks like. It will be different for every one of them, and that is the point,” said Segal.
Focus on human judgment
Open to students across disciplines, [YOU] on AI + X is designed as a hands-on experience combining technical practice, critical thinking and an explicit focus on human judgment. Participants will explore applications of AI across entrepreneurship, research, creativity and the public interest.
The Berkeley cohort will be led by Alexandre Bayen, director of CITRIS and the Banatao Institute and a UC Berkeley professor whose research spans machine learning and large-scale systems, and Trond Petersen, a UC Berkeley professor of sociology whose research examines organizations, inequality and opportunity.
Together with Sidhu, their involvement brings complementary perspectives to a central challenge facing the development and deployment of AI: understanding both how intelligent systems are built and how the decisions and opportunities shaped by those systems are distributed.
The first edition of the program brings together students from UC Berkeley and IE University from around the world. Each participant will develop a functional project in one of three tracks: an AI-enabled venture, a research project or a creative work such as a video.
By the end of the eight weeks, participants will have produced a working demonstration, evidence pack and reflection portfolio. The goal is not simply to demonstrate the use of AI, but to make visible how each system was built, evaluated and governed.
Alongside the project work, a parallel human-skills track will reinforce capabilities that become increasingly important as AI takes on more execution, including critical thinking, curiosity, resilience, emotional intelligence, psychological safety and working with uncertainty.
The program will run online from October to December 2026, with simultaneous sessions taking place in the mornings at Berkeley and evenings at IE University. It will culminate in a Demo Day, where participants will present their projects and demonstrate how an initial idea became a functioning AI-enabled system for innovation, research or creative work.
[YOU] on AI + X is an initiative of IEX Labs at the IE School of Science & Technology, developed in collaboration with faculty affiliated with CITRIS and the Banatao Institute at UC Berkeley.
Watch the video: [YOU] on AI + X