Santa Clara University launched a weekly workshop called the AI Kitchen in the spring of 2026. The program aims to promote interdisciplinary artificial intelligence (AI) fluency among students, faculty, staff, and Silicon Valley professionals. Approximately 50 individuals attend each nearly four-hour session.

The AI Kitchen maintains a "code-light" approach to allow participation from individuals across various technical backgrounds. Tiffany Le, an incoming third-year computer science and engineering major and student studio lead for the program, said, "Tech sometimes can be a bit more male dominated, and so being able to create a more inclusive environment really resonated with me." Le added, "When I went out to promote AI Kitchen and try to bring in other students, that was also something that they really liked." She recalled, "During one session we had a staff member from [the] Anthropology [Department], and they brought in a lot of new, different perspectives about how AI might be changing the humanities." Le stated, "Coming from a more tech perspective, we may be focusing on more of the technical details and all of the code and specifics, but it's also really important to think about what the implications are in other fields." She said, "The fact that AI Kitchen is accessible to everyone, regardless of their background, is one of the most incredible things." Le added, "That's one of the biggest things that I appreciate about AI Kitchen." She noted, "It's a place where people can feel comfortable exploring, and they don't have to be worried about where their background may be from." Le said, "They don't have to be concerned about what they already know and what they don't know, because we're all here at the end of the day to learn."

Kai Lukoff, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Santa Clara University, said the name "AI Kitchen" was chosen intentionally based on research indicating that stereotypical tech bro culture causes women and underrepresented students to opt out of computer science spaces. Lukoff said, "That metaphor then signals that we're going for something that's more familiar, communal and creative, as opposed to perhaps an AI hacker space." He said, "What I wanted to start with AI Kitchen is not just a course about AI literacy, but what one might call AI fluency." Lukoff added, "So not just having an understanding of the tools, but also hands-on ability to work with these tools, explore their strengths and weaknesses, and engage in real-world projects that apply them." Students from the AI Kitchen are collaborating with the university's donor relations office on a project to use AI to connect donors with faculty members based on shared interests. Lukoff said, "That's one project, for instance, that now students out of AI Kitchen are working on together with our donor relations that's come out of the sorts of sessions that we facilitate." He said, "That kind of collaboration is really what we need to explore some of the capabilities and also the limitations of these tools right now." Lukoff said, "I think a lot of folks are sort of still stuck in this paradigm of AI as a chatbot, like the early versions of ChatGPT that we interact with." He added, "But if people can explore them as these agentic tools … that have really come out since the beginning of the year, that unlocks a lot of the capabilities of these systems." Lukoff said, "There is certainly a lot of hesitancy amongst students, faculty and staff sometimes with these tools, and I'm by no means a cheerleader for AI tools." He said, "But I'm also a pragmatist in the sense that I think, whether we like it or not, these tools are here now." Lukoff added, "And as a university, we shouldn't cede the development of these tools to folks who don't have that kind of critical perspective that we can bring as students and faculty and staff in a university setting."