Smarter, faster and can adapt quicker than any species on earth, artificial intelligence (AI) is changing our world faster than we can comprehend. As AI’s presence grows, our staff must adapt alongside it.
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence system designed to allow users to have a conversation with a system similar to that of a human. It can answer questions, write and code. The program was launched Nov. 30, 2022.
In spring 2023, faculty and staff gathered for the first time to discuss AI in the classroom. The working group put together various statements that faculty can use in their syllabi.
When professor of marketing Nisha Ray-Chaudhuri attended this meeting, she expected the majority of professors to discourage its use. Instead, they expressed curiosity.
“The majority of our people were concerned about how can we use it. But more importantly, what parameters can be put into place so that it doesn’t look like the wild wild west?” Ray-Chaudhuri said. “It was more of a conversation on what boundaries need to exist. Would those boundaries be ethical, and what would those boundaries look like?”
With the new technology becoming increasingly prevalent in education and corporations alike, professors are looking into adjusting their long standing ways in order to accommodate.
Fears regarding students losing critical thinking to AI, as well as originality within students’ work, are echoed among several professors. With ChatGPT being readily available, writing support coordinator Laura Hardin Marshall of the academic integrity department said some students use the resource to complete entire assignments for them.
“I think a lot of instructors are fearful then that if that gets outsourced, ‘How do I know that students actually understand the content if they didn’t actually do the writing themselves?’” Hardin Marshall said. “I’m not of the mind that all students are going to use it inappropriately or unethically. I think the people who were going to cheat, were already going to cheat. This just gives them an easy tool to do so,” Hardin Marshall said.
Laura Miller, philosophy professor and AI ethicist is open to the change AI is bringing. However, she also believes that it’s vital it doesn’t become a crutch for students.
“Use it as an aid to help you, not as a replacement for you. We need big ideas and critical thinking – now and in the future. Don’t sacrifice that,” Miller said.
The faculty and staff working group will continue to meet to discuss the future of AI at Webster.
Featured image by Gabrielle Lindemann
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