Jun. 25—GRAND FORKS — As the University of North Dakota explores how artificial intelligence can be used for research, education and other opportunities, it also looks at concerns surrounding AI, including ethics and guidance.
Anna Kinney, one of the co-chairs of the AI Collective (Co.AI), said the rise of AI is, for some, causing no little consternation.
“There’s certainly a sense of resignation for some people,” she said. “There’s excitement from others who see real opportunity, and it’s a new enough moment in education that we’re still figuring out what it looks like to be a healthy AI university and community. What does appropriateness look like in this landscape? What do ethical use and humane, human-centered relationships look like in a time where a lot of our work is mediated by technology? And so that’s really challenging and ever-changing.”
There are concerns both from and about students. Kinney said some students are wary about what AI means for creative integrity and process, which spans outside of the arts and performance and into the creativity required for research, writing, patient work and teaching work.
Meanwhile, educators have concerns about students using AI to cheat and also about validating and ensuring the degrees conferred to students reflect the skills they have nurtured. Monson Endowed Chair for Medical Education Richard Van Eck, associate dean for teaching and learning at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences and co-chair of Co.AI, said educators who train healthcare students must see three to five years into the future. AI moves faster than that.
“A student comes in, they’re going to be in a program between two, three, four, five years and then they’re going to go start working in an organization. So already we have to forecast three to five years down the road,” he said. “But, at the same time, AI is changing so fast that even if we are somewhat good at looking three to five years down the road, we never have a chance of knowing what AI is going to actually look like at those times.”
The primary concern about assessing students in the time of AI is something education institutions have on their minds. Kinney said institutions are consistently trying to find ways to create authentic assessments — assessment strategies that align well with authentic use cases, authentic behaviors and authentic experiences students will experience in the field.
Through exploring AI, skeptics and critics need to be involved in the conversation, she said.
“Our understanding of this needs to include everybody,” she said. “We’re all deeply affected by this. But, it’s so interesting to explore this, not just as an external thing happening to us, but also as an internal area of study and of opportunity. All voices are necessary for us to paint a better picture of what that interaction looks like, and to build caution.”
Skeptics of the technology are part of Co.AI. Van Eck said the group will spend time over the summer building its pillars and principles for how AI should be used at UND. The AI Collective, according to its website, will provide university-wide leadership, oversight and coordination for responsible and human-centered AI adoption at UND.
Van Eck explained that “it should be used to help students do better, people should be authentic with it.”
Co.AI’s pillars include teaching and learning; research development and creativity; operational empowerment; and policy, ethics and guidance.
The collective is exploring the stances and suggestions of what it needs for each pillar. In the fall, Van Eck said the collective hopes to have a new resource where everyone can access secure AI without having to purchase it themselves.
“It’s one thing to tell people ‘don’t use AI, don’t use free AI,’ but if we aren’t giving them secure AI, then where are they going to do this?” he said. “So we’ve got to level the playing field and say ‘everybody has access, here’s where you can do it,’ and then from there we’re going to work out where are the kind of pain points, what are the most useful things to do, the things that could apply across the whole school, and let’s start testing this out to make sure we know how to do it.
“Lots of preparation work, but the real work and progress, I think, is going to start in the fall,” Van Eck said.
