January 9, 2026 (Updated January 13, 2026)
Modern institutions run on metrics and measures of success—in higher education, for instance, grades, graduation rates, and job placement drive strategies. But these metrics often seem to miss the most important part of education, according to University of Utah One-U Responsible Artificial Intelligence Initiative (One-U RAI) faculty fellow C. Thi Nguyen.
In Nguyen’s new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game—available January 13 from Penguin Random House and already accruing praise—the U philosophy professor explains how institutions systematically limit what data we collect. That poses problems for the growing cross-sector use of AI: machine-learning programs trained on that data are likely to inherit those constraints and limitations.
For example, student success prediction algorithms that optimize for graduation rate don’t capture growth in students’ curiosity, reflectiveness, or creativity—or in their sense of community and fulfillment. “Why do scoring systems lead to so much joy and fun in games,” Nguyen asks, “and why do they drain the life out of everything in official rankings and bureaucratic metrics?”
In a Washington Post review, critic Becca Rothfeld said The Score brims with these sorts of insights. "Nguyen is a connoisseur of games, and his musings about them are ingenious and entertaining," Rothfeld wrote. "The Score is socially attentive, historically literate and imbued with sensual glee. It is exuberantly eclectic, full of passionate digressions into the history of algorithms or the nature of classification systems or the workings of skateboarding competitions."
Through his recently awarded One-U RAI fellowship, Nguyen wants to provide U computing students—the AI developers of tomorrow—with new avenues for the kind of critical thinking espoused in The Score. He’ll work to more deeply embed ethics in computer science through a cross-listed computing and philosophy course, an AI ethics certificate, and more.
Read more about The Score or attend a local event featuring Nguyen: