Former San José State business lecturer Damon Moon is leading the way for the next generation of students, stepping into the new age of technology involving artificial intelligence while maintaining social connections and relationships. 

Moon is a chief business officer at Goover, an AI company that helps people conduct research.

“In my view the world has changed, whether people like it or not, AI is here,” Moon said. 

Moon wanted to find something in AI where he can contribute like a start up company, but not exactly starting from scratch.

“I discovered that this company is a leading company in AI in Korea, but they don’t have a presence in the United States,” Moon said. 

After meeting with the founder of Goover, Moon was able to see the vision that the company had in store which the founder said will contribute in shaping the world where people live and work with AI which will begin to do a bulk of the work for companies. 

“I got into this vision where Goover can be that place where people can make AI agents, buy and sell agents, distribute their agents and make the agents work,” Moon said. 

Goover is like an app store for AI agents, they will work together and help complete tasks and discover other agents to narrow down the amount of work needed, according to Moon. 

AI agents contain a wide range of functions and use natural language processing techniques of large language models to comprehend and respond to user inputs using external tools, according to an IBM webpage.

“AI agents are gonna be a new thing. There’s not a lot of people who have created these agents, but these agents will be there and people are going to need it,” Moon said. 

Although there are many pros to AI being involved in the classroom, it also has its fair share of cons.

There are concerns over AI in education that include privacy and security issues, according to a Oct. 24 University of Illinois article.

Some other cons include bias in algorithms that can affect educational outcomes and the potential to rely too heavily on the technology at the expense of teacher-student interactions. 

Moon was a lecturer who taught multiple undergraduate and graduate business courses, he finished his fifth year at San José State after teaching summer courses.

He would move on and accept a position as chief business officer at Goover, overseeing North American operations. 

He was already involved with the AI industry and the program he used in his teachings was called AskClass.

Moon is the co-founder of AskClass, an AI company geared to help students connect and transform lectures into engaging discussions, which he started in 2020.

He would use this program in his classes which affected students by having them open up and connect with each other and build relationships with their colleagues. 

Jiasheng Jiang, a recent business administration graduate from San José State and current master’s student at Georgetown University school of business, was a student of Moon for three years and experienced AskClass. 

“AskClass did a really good job helping students come out of their shell, students aren’t afraid to give their own opinions, but they need that little push and encouragement,” Jiang said. 

Moon said he would have questions projected and used by AskClass. The questions would be worth points and students would need to participate to perform well in the class.

The system is intended to make lectures more interactive for students and the lecturer so they’re more engaged and have to connect more, according to the AskClass website.

“He was a big advocate for participating, a lot of my classmates were introverted, Damon knew that – he would have a prompt up in the projector, it’s different every single day,” Jiang said.

Although Moon was an advocate for AI, he wanted students to interact more and connect.

Moon said he’s interested in their stories and wants students to open up and participate. 

Although the program has over 1,000 lecturers using over 130 schools according to the AskClass website. 

“At the end of the day you improve your public speaking and communication, I’ve never seen other professors use it before,” Jiang said. 

Jiang said as an introvert, it helped him break out of his shell and become more outgoing and communicate better.

SJSU is involved in the AI industry after announcing the vision the university has with artificial intelligence, according to a post on the SJSU website

The goal Moon had for AskClass was to have students interact and connect with each other more, even though AI is here, it won’t replace people because there’s certain things it cannot replicate that humans do. 

“The goal of AskClass – being able to ask good questions, practicing that is a very important skill,” Moon said. “Being able to have skills that AI cannot replace such as presentation skills, being able to articulate your thoughts clearly and present that with confidence is something AI can never do or replace.

AI may have a lot of advantages in terms of getting work done, but there’s still skills that humans can do which the program cannot replicate.  

Another goal of Moon’s company was to help people build relationships.

Moon said as technology develops further, there’s more disconnection among people.

Shariq Shah, an SJSU alumni and CEO and co-founder of Edvisor.ai, met Moon at a tech conference in New York.

They stayed in contact and Moon even invited him to be a guest lecturer at SJSU for his business classes. 

During the guest lectures, Shah was able to see how Moon interacted with his students and the structure of his classes and teachings. 

“He’s a super generous guy. I guest lectured in his class and that’s where I saw how he interacted with his students,” Shah said. The level of love, care, compassion and attention he would give his students and the level of respect the students would give back to him was phenomenal to look at.”

Shah created Edvisor.ai with some aspects of AskClass and Moon helped support him and his co-founder creating the business. 

“He supported us with outreach, advising, and connections. The guy just met me and he showered me with help,” Shah said. 

Networking is a key part to the college experience and Moon wants that to continue even though he is no longer at SJSU. 

“I call students by their names and make it very interactive. Because of that, the learning experience is so much more exciting, better and effective,” Moon said.

Moon will continue to be in connection with SJSU and his former students.

 According to a LinkedIn post he made three weeks ago, he will share updates of him building an agentic AI company.

He said he will share more information on AI and the future of the technology with students as he encourages people to learn to adapt to the world of AI as it continues to grow. 

“The main thing for the students – We’re going to launch more of a training program to teach users, including students, how to use this service really well which will include tutorials,” Moon said. “There’s so many features that people don’t really know how to use.

Moon also said he will visit San José State to share these training sessions and receive feedback. This is something that is specifically for San José State.”