I promised to say a few words about the recent “Teaching with AI” conference that I attended earlier this week. (See my previous post #TeachingWithAI, which I am reblogging below.) First off, let me begin with the big question regarding AI and higher ed: should college professors like me embrace new “GenAI” tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, Bard, etc., or in the alternative, should we adopt a clean and simple bright-line rule prohibiting the use of A.I. altogether. Or more to the point, should we resist or join the revolution? This, in a word, is why I attended this AI conference: to try to answer this big question.

For my part, although I am already redesigning my courses in order to allow my students to test these A.I. “large language models” or LLMs for themselves (see here), I should disclose my Burkean priors: I am deeply suspicious of radical change, especially when done hastily, and my biggest fear or worst-case scenario regarding “GenAI” is that overuse of these new cheating genies could breed an entire generation of abject idiots! The pro-A.I. crowd, by contrast, tends to minimize the unprecedented and destabilizing nature of these powerful and super-fast A.I. cheating tools. By way of example, many speakers at the “Teaching with A.I.” conference compared ChatGPT to the pocket calculator, i.e. as just another step in our human problem-solving capabilities. Alas, I suspect this analogy is a false one for two reasons: unlike an abacus or pocket calculator, LLMs like ChatGPT are not only amassing and even stealing massive amounts of copyrighted materials and user data; they are also beginning to replace our ability to think for ourselves.

Given my priors and Burkean intuitions, my favorite talk at the conference was titled Thinking Slowly in the Age of AI. (Shout out to my colleagues Bruce Lenthall and Jessica Morris from the University of Pennsylvania for their excellent work. I have posted a link to their slide deck below.) In brief, Lenthall and Morris explained how college professors need to first decide what they want their students to learn from their courses before deciding whether and how to expose students to A.I. But how can we move more slowly and deliberately when the world around us is moving so quickly? On the last day of the conference, for example, OpenAI announced that it is now rolling out new voice and image capabilities in ChatGPT!!! No, you cannot make this up!