By Kayla Brooks
Contributing Writer
Assistant Director of Student Success
Center for Student Success & Access Services
Does it feel like the letters A and I are hanging out together a lot more?
Professional chefs cook (lousy) recipes generated by AI. Content creators ask AI for mashups of animals that don’t exist. It’s the hottest topic in Hollywood right now—as WAG and SAG-AFTRA debated for months to protect artistic contributions and the use of human likeness.
So, what’s the deal with AI—artificial intelligence—anyway? Is it scary? Revolutionary? Both? Past TEDxAustinCollege speaker Devin Gonier ’09 defines artificial intelligence in its simplest terms. Gonier is Chief Technology Officer at WageUp in Denver, Colorado, where he directs product development using AI that inspires excitement and inspiration in the work environment.
“Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is a very broad term that encompasses a number of subfields in computer science, but specifically aims at solving problems that would otherwise require human intelligence to achieve,” he says. “Importantly, AI systems typically have a managed state and target objectives in which they make decisions or take actions according to an objective.”
Gonier explained there are subfields that are essential ingredients in any advanced AI system. First, there is Natural Language Processing, the study of using algorithms to understand and use language, and also Machine Learning, the study of using datasets to train models to generalize understanding of a domain or task.
“Interestingly, there’s a growing movement in reframing research as building ‘Augmented AI,’” he said. “Those are tools that can solve problems without human intervention but do achieve better performance when done in conjunction with humans, such that a human and AI achieve better results together than AI alone or a human alone. In the context of education, this is especially important. Our goal should be to teach students how to leverage AI in the classroom.”
“Instead of punishing students for using ChatGPT, make it a requirement for an assignment,” he explained. “If you ask your students to write a paper on Plato’s The Symposium, ask students to use ChatGPT, and cite it as part of the authorship process. Top points go to students who effectively used their own thinking and AI thinking to produce ideas that would not be possible independently,” Gonier suggested.
This assignment could be especially useful if the professor can compare and contrast the ChatGPT citation with a more traditional citation—pointing out what AI gets right and wrong.
Dean of Humanities Dr. Greg Kinzer discusses AI frequently in his writing courses. He shared, “AI language models, like ChatGPT, aren’t going anywhere. As teachers, rather than avoiding them or seeking to prevent students using them, we should embrace these new technologies in the classroom. I want my students to understand what ChatGPT is, what it isn’t, and how to use it.”
“Students in my classes have started exploring some of these questions in really interesting ways,” he continued. “In a poetry writing course, students tasked ChatGPT to write original poems on a range of topics. We had a great time examining what patterns emerged, where the AI seemed to run into limitations, and what those limitations might signal about the language model. The experience also really challenged our sense of what it means to write a poem.”
In his Fall Term 2023 advanced literature course, Kinzer had students use ChatGPT as a research tool where they discovered that even AI has built-in human bias.
"Just ask an AI image generator to generate an image of a ‘professional,’ a ‘Black professional,’ and a ‘woman professional,’ and you’ll immediately see what I mean. Moving forward, I hope to develop new ways for my students to explore the ethics of these new AI technologies and to think critically about the gap between what AIs can do and what our human values might want them to do,” he said.
Gonier noted, “In education, many teachers are very anxious about what this means for evaluating student performance and for even the possibility of being replaced in certain contexts. I don’t anticipate an existential risk from AI anytime soon.”
AI may be a mix of terrifying and thrilling. Fortunately, the field of higher education has weathered similar storms in the past. Remember the introduction of calculators, personal computers, and the internet at large? Remarkably, evolving technology has often been intermingled with how students are educated. Austin College is making efforts both inside and outside the classroom to ensure students feel comfortable and curious about change—including AI.
Austin College highlights Devin Gonier ’09 as part of the 175th Year Celebration. His work to open the lines of communication about artificial intelligence is an example of the celebration theme: Explore. Belong. Make a Difference. Gonier says that research in AI, especially as it pertains to ethics and reinforcement learning, is the best way to do philosophy in our modern era. He followed his Austin College undergraduate degree in philosophy and religion with a master’s degree in machine learning from Columbia University.