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https://hedgehogreview.com/web-features/thr/posts/a-new-rule-of-education-for-the-age-of-ai>
"Earlier this month, my provost asked my thoughts about a sister school’s
decision to name ChatGPT among the malefactors in a campus-wide syllabus
statement on plagiarism. Should we follow suit? I was consulted because I had
just convened a three-day faculty seminar on artificial intelligence and
liberal arts education, which included conversation partners hailing from
biology, studio art, education, mathematics, economics, sociology, computer
science, theology, and philosophy, among other disciplines. That experience
determined my answer to the provost:
Wait and see; let guidelines bubble up
from the faculty as they discover what the new tools can and cannot do. A
syllabus statement might be useful at some point, I argued, but anything we
craft now will likely seem outdated in short order. More importantly, the
seminar suggested that policies, even well-designed ones, will not address the
deeper issues posed by the new technologies.
I urged caution for three reasons. First, while my colleagues all recognized
that the new tools could be used to cheat on assignments in their classes (and
some shared stories of how students had already done so), no one suggested that
we outlaw AI entirely. Some voiced optimism about generative AI’s promise for
education, others skepticism. One participant had already integrated Midjourney
into his creative practice. Most participants, though, had little or no direct
exposure prior to our meetings; the seminar was their first chance to test
drive ChatGPT, DALL-E, and company, and, in turn, to think aloud about
generative AI’s appropriate uses in their classes. With such a range of opinion
and experience, a consensus about campus policy was impossible to imagine. We
agreed, however, that in the months ahead we would need to reassess not just
the nuts and bolts of assignments but also the rationales driving our
assignments. If ChatGPT can ace an exercise, one participant wondered, do
students really need to do it? Our students are going to ask this question; so
should we.
Second, a statement that targets current brands such as ChatGPT would approach
the problem too narrowly. Even prohibiting generative AI (as a larger category)
may quickly prove problematic, given how many applications will soon receive an
AI injection. With the unveiling of the Wordcraft Writers Workshop last year,
for example, Google previewed how a large language model can be integrated into
a word processing application as an editor, brainstorming partner, and ghost
writer. In the very near future, then, students won’t need to pay covert visits
to ChatGPT; the AI assistant will be built into Microsoft Word, Google Docs,
and whatever comes next. As a result, tools that now look like cheatware may,
to our future students, appear to be ordinary parts of word processing.
Finally, singling out ChatGPT in our syllabuses would send the wrong signal. We
must not delude ourselves: Generative AI cannot be dealt with simply by putting
the right regulations in place. Figuring out AI’s role in higher education is a
pedagogical problem, not an administrative one, and the problem is likely to
find diverse solutions across the disciplines, perhaps even within academic
departments. Our classrooms are now laboratories in which AI trials are going
to be conducted—whether by us or, if we fail to take the lead, by our students
without our input."
Via Wayne Radinsky.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
