Itâs one of 2023âs hottest topics: artificial intelligence, or âAI.â Read any news outlet or spend some time on social media and someone, somewhere, is showing off something that Chat GPT âwroteâ or that an image generator âdrew.â
Science fiction becoming science reality? Not quite yet. But itâs fair to say that the power of these machine-learning tools, and the speed at which they have advanced into something approaching the fantastical, has created a mix of hype and hysteria can be hard to parse through.
Read also: Ask the experts: Where will artificial intelligence go next? (Dal News, June 5)
Within higher education, initial conversations around tools like Chat GPT have largely focused on academic integrity. Back in April, , featuring a range of perspectives from across the university. One of the participants in that event was Christian Blouin, professor and associate dean academic in the Faculty of Computer Science, who is working to support faculty though multiple disruptions in recent past and recently appointed as institutional lead (AI strategy) for ±«Óătv.
And while Dr. Blouin sees the academic integrity conversation as an important one, heâs also keen to broaden the AI conversation at ±«Óătv into something much more holistic.
âIf we assume pace of disruption is increasing â even if it stays constant â we donât want to find ourselves, in a where weâll constantly be criminalizing everything new,â he says. âInstead of defining ourselves by whatâs not allowed, we need to be clear on what weâre trying to achieve as a university.â
Leslie Phillmore, associate vice-president academic, says the pace by which AI is impacting and will continue to affect academic work makes this a critical conversation to have now.
âHaving Christian help facilitate that conversation at ±«Óătv not only will give this important work a focal point but will allow us to better connect with other universities across Canada to share information and strategies,â she says.
Developing systems and supports
As for what Dal is trying to achieve with AI, thatâs a conversation with Dr. Blouin right at its centre. For the next couple of years, a portion of his time will be spent consulting with staff and faculty, answering their questions and helping the university develop policies and guidelines with respect to the use of AI and machine-learning systems in the classroom, in research and in administrative work.
âAI is not really a technology question â itâs more a people question,â explains Dr. Blouin. âWhere is it appropriate or ethical to delegate automation or decision-making to algorithms and software systems â and where is it not? Especially within a university, a place where we disseminate knowledge, itâs important that we empower everyone to be part of that conversation.â
Dr. Blouin already hosted meetings and delivered presentations with many Faculties and faculty councils on the subject, with more to come. His initial focus is on putting together a guidance document for fall courses on how these AI tools (such as large-language models) should be considered.
âPeople want to know the boundaries of what they can and canât do, and September is coming soon for faculty who may be looking to adjust their course plans or their syllabus,â he says. âThe idea is a mix of pedagogical support and guidance-level advice â a working document that gets folks talking about it and feeling like they can start to get engaged in the subject.â
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Longer term, itâs about helping Dal prepare itself for an AI-informed digital future in which the pace of change is accelerating. Dr. Blouin wants to ensure the university isnât caught off-guard by new developments but, instead, has the processes and people in place to carefully consider opportunities and challenges as they emerge. Most importantly, that we get better at coming together and make nuanced decisions in a multi-disciplinary and collaborative manner.
The human element
While the term âAIâ is still perhaps best known for its sci-fi context in popular fiction like Terminator or The Matrix, its current application isnât about artificial consciousness akin to actual human thinking. Itâs about computer processes that consider massive amounts of data, whether words or numbers, to perform certain tasks very quickly.
What makes it seem âintelligent,â though, is that the tasks being performed have, traditionally, been distinctly in the human domain such as writing complex text in particular styles or creating realistic-looking images. Through AI tools, computer software can now perform these functions â and can do so at a much higher quality level than ever before.
Scary stuff? It can seem that way. âThe first time someone uses a tool like Chat GPT it can be pretty overwhelming,â says Dr. Blouin, referring to the text-generating software developed by OpenAI that, since its launch just seven months ago, has become the standard-bearer for what modern AI can do. âThese systems designed to generate language exercise quite a bit of analytical skills, and thatâs disturbing, because we thought we [as humans] had a monopoly on that.â
But these sorts of big-data systems can also be incredibly helpful. They work so fast, and on such a huge scale, that they can accomplish easily automatable tasks or processes that take up significant amounts of time â particularly ones that donât require or benefit from creativity and analysis. Dr. Blouin cites an example of being asked to summarize a 90-page proposal: a large language tool can review that and provide back bullet points in seconds, versus taking hours to read through it and take notes.
âIt gives me the ability to scan so much more information more quickly,â he explains. âBut we should never make critical decisions based on that work alone.â
Empowering people
If weâre looking to maintain the essential human role in our work with AI, we need to make sure the humans know what to do with it all. And there is a lot to consider here â not just issues of authorship, but bias, privacy, copyright and (given the carbon footprint of the servers that run these tools) environmental implications as well.
âJust asking faculty to figure this out on their own â itâs not realistic or fair,â says Dr. Blouin. âThatâs why we want to figure out how we provide guidance to faculty who are designing courses and programs on how to bring this effectively and ethically into their work. And this applies to staff as well. How do we provide the Dal community with hype-free information and guidance on whatâs appropriate to do, and to help them adapt to a rapidly changing situation and make the best of it?â
In a way, Dr. Blouin sees his appointment as working towards his own redundancy as institutional lead of AI â to help ±«Óătv reach a point where Faculties, departments, instructors, students all feel like they can engage with the bigger AI discussion in their own work or study.
âThe problems and opportunities that AI represents in various fields and disciplines are unique to those disciplines. A computer scientist wouldnât necessarily understand them. So over the next decade, everyone has to âownâ AI, not just computer scientists. But we can only do this if thereâs a baseline understanding, and people feel they have the authority to make good, informed decisions.â
âIf you empower people with knowledge to form their own opinion, and to have the confidence to do so â thatâs how we navigate the ethical nuance of AI.â