During this session, Matt Jackson, applications analyst in the Technology and Innovation division, defined AI as a computer making decisions or completing tasks typically done by humans. He cited, as an example, large language models, a set of technologies that consume huge volumes of words and phrases and predict the relationships between them – training to answer questions. He offered a quick guide to asking AI questions, including:
- Ask AI for help rather than producing a finished product, like editing rather than writing.
- Identify key contexts.
- Make adjustments as you go – repeat.
- Don’t use jargon.
- Critically read the results offered by AI.
- Adapt. Technology is evolving rapidly, and so is our approach to using it.
Project faculty and staff focused on the combination of risks and benefits that AI presents. One teacher described him as “incredibly bad at math,” unable, for example, to correctly count the number of days between two calendar dates, but he praised the usefulness of technology for reviewing letters.
Susana Wadgymar, assistant professor of biology, earned professional-level ChatGPT access for her biostatistics course, a course in which students examine how experiments are designed and how to examine and analyze biological data. She also designed a custom ChatGPT that the class can use for specific assignments.
If students use ChatGPT for an assignment, they must include a statement about how they used it. If they use the custom version, they must include a transcription.
“I told my students,” Wadgymar said, “that we were experimenting together.”
She described AI as a simple way to gather generalized information, but little capable of providing deep learning. Students’ use of the tools will help them recognize poor results, Wadgymar said, and students will be able to identify what sets them and their work apart from what an AI tool can provide : “What makes human experience necessary?
Philosophy professor Paul Studtmann integrated ChatGPT into a course with a feeling of both encouragement and trepidation. Students wrote an essay and then spent a class using the AI tool to edit it. They highlighted any changes and wrote a paragraph stating whether they were mechanical improvements or adjustments.
“ChatGPT is very limited in its ability to develop original ideas,” Studtmann said, “and yet has a remarkable ability to take a piece of writing and improve it significantly. All of the students noted this in their paragraphs. And there is a risk that in doing so, the author’s voice is lost. Several students also noticed this. That said, all students concluded that ChatGPT can be a very useful tool.