Colleges around the country are starting to teach their students and faculty AI literacy, and guide them to ethical and productive uses of AI. What if the campuses worked to share those skills with the surrounding community as well? That’s the premise of an unusual AI center at the University of Baltimore, which recently hosted a citywide town hall on AI bringing together city officials, local business leaders, folks from community organizations, professors, and just curious people in the city. They heard from enthusiasts and skeptics, who had big ideas for how to manage the rush of AI into communities across the country.
A series of town halls aimed to explore how AI could be adopted across Baltimore in positive ways. Led by an unusual center at the University of Baltimore, the forum brought together city officials, local business leaders, folks from community organizations, professors, and just curious people in the community. Is it a model for educators bring AI literacy to a broader community?
AI Personas Briefing Report, Center for AI Learning and Community-Engaged Innovation, University of Baltimore.
Thanks to this week’s sponsors, Studiosity and Social Research: An International Quarterly.
Jeff Young:
Hello, and welcome to Learning Curve, where we look at how education is adapting to the rise of generative AI.
I'm Jeff Young, a longtime education journalist.
I was in Baltimore a couple weeks ago for an unusual AI summit. About 200 people, mostly from around the city of Baltimore, showed up for a series of town hall discussions. The focus was on how to make Baltimore an AI-enhanced city and how people from across the area could come together to harness AI to make people's lives better.
Jessica Stansbury:
For the town halls, in each of the town hall sessions, there will be an expert, and then there will be a facilitator.
Jeff Young:
And Jessica Stansbury, who organized the event, made it clear that this wasn't going to be some panel discussion where attendees just sit passively and listen,
Jessica Stansbury:
So it's not going to be me and somebody else being merely people talking, it's going to be us hearing from your voice on what do you think is missing? What do you think we still need to focus on?
Jeff Young:
This event was organized by the University of Baltimore's Cali Center, which stands for the Center for AI Learning and Community Engaged Innovation. Now it seems like just about every college or university these days has started an AI center of some kind, but I've never heard of anything quite like this one, where the whole goal was to figure out ways to bring AI to the surrounding community in helpful ways. Here's how Jessica Stansbury, who founded and leads the center, explains how Cali sprouted.
Jessica Stansbury:
So our teaching and learning center head was doing all the work related to AI,
Jeff Young:
You were doing training?
Jessica Stansbury:
Were doing training, correct. And what I noticed was because we are a community engaged institution overall, the University of Baltimore for Baltimore, yeah, we were getting a lot of requests outside of the university.
Jeff Young:
Interesting, so people wanted to know stuff?
Jessica Stansbury:
And we are a trusted entity. We are an anchor institution within Baltimore. So, when we were getting these calls, it started to really get me thinking. Well, if we keep everything inside of a teaching and learning center, which only serves faculty, then we miss serving the students, we miss serving the staff, we miss serving the community. So we needed to have a center that could be neutral and engage all stakeholders, and it's one of the only, I believe, centers here at the institution that engages all of those stakeholders.
Jeff Young:
These town halls about AI, they show what this could look like. It brought together city officials, local business leaders, folks from community organizations, professors, and just curious people in the city. The Lieutenant Governor showed up for one introductory panel, as well as the State Secretary of Higher Education and the state secretary of labor to prepare for the summit. The center worked with a local consulting company to interview people throughout the city of Baltimore and analyze various views and attitudes that they have toward AI.
The homework for the event was to read a report they issued that breaks down about a half a dozen personas, as far as the views of AI in the city.
Jessica Stansbury:
We have the builders, so the people that are, you know, actively heavily invested in using AI for community impact, but also not waiting for, you know, guidelines or, you know, someone to tell them what they need to do, like they're making things possible. So, we do have that sector, that group, and Baltimore is filled with young entrepreneurs, or even entrepreneurs, right? Doesn't matter what age they are. We have lots of them.
So, from those, from the builders, we go to the adapters, and in that ecosystem, we have a lot of people who are like myself, first-gen college student, we use AI, and I say this because this is how I use AI, and place myself kind of in that grouping as a way, like a cognitive support system, so being able to make sure that it's helping me reach more potential.
So, how do I use this to kind of augment the work that I'm doing by still making sure that it's my voice, right? It's, it's my work. I take pride in my work, but you know, using that to help. This is like your, your person who goes back to school after they haven't been in school for a long time, and now they got to juggle family and work and school using AI to kind of support them in that process, and then from the adapters, we move into the questioners, which is filled with academics and lawyers, and we have tons of those across Baltimore as well, right?
But these are ones that see value in AI, but there's still one time to make sure and evaluate and understand the long-term impacts. Hmm, but we're struggling to keep up with that pace, because the technology moves so quickly, and then after you have the question, the I call them the questioners, we get to the skeptics, which aren't really like skeptical of AI, but these are your trade workers, your first responders, contractors, and these, these folks aren't really using AI, but they could be if you showed them how and showed them why it was relevant, so show them the value in using that AI, and then from that you get to the resistors who aren't really resistors, but they're more protectors of the people of the community, and we call them the guardians,
Jeff Young:
So just to recap, these personas around AI in this city, and I think it actually tracks to all kinds of communities, are builders, adapters, questioners, skeptics, and guardians,
Jessica Stansbury:
So if you think about all of those different connecting pieces, which right now are really kind of siloed and fragmented, if we can get them all together, and then get coordinated action forward. I think we could be a leading city, because we have all those pieces already here. We just need someone to help us put them together and show us how to move forward.
Jeff Young:
While this summit was set in Baltimore and focused on life here, the approach is one designed to be replicated by colleges anywhere. In fact, Jessica hopes that others will run forums like these in their own communities, and these personas are meant to be helpful for thinking about AI adoption, even within a specific college.
You might relate to being a builder who's rushing to adopt AI, or like Jessica, an adapter, or maybe you're a skeptic, or a guardian. Jessica Center also aims to change the conversation to focus more on why AI should be adopted and paint a vision of what that might look like.
Jessica Stansbury:
I think it can be used to solve problems. I think we need to start looking at AI as public good, like AI for public good. How do we make impact using AI? And I think that there are ways to do that in getting all stakeholders at the table and saying, what are our challenges that we're facing? How? And then we get those that are the AI experts in the room, because I'm not an AI expert under the hood by any means, could not, you know, I could give you a brief, simplified version of that, but getting those right people with those expertise in the room, I think we could change a lot of things, I think you know we spend a lot of money and resources all trying to do similar things, where if we worked together we could probably save some money and resources, and if we also use the technology we have, AI, I think we could do really great things.
Jeff Young:
Yeah, it's interesting. There is this.. I feel like right now there's a bit of a.. well, there's a backlash against AI. It seems to be growing, especially I hear it. I'm sure you're reading the same things they're reading about college students booing at commencement speeches when AI is kind of touted as the future. Do you feel like there's, you know, do you feel like that's another reason to like put forward a positive vision at this moment?
Jessica Stansbury:
I think some of the reason that booing is happening is because I think there's a gap of literacy and understanding, and I think, or I believe, that the booing is also happening because they weren't involved in the conversation, so, and that's why, at least for Cali, it's so important to our mission to get all those voices in the conversation, because I feel like some of that booing is because, well, you're telling me this is now what's happening, but I wasn't part of that conversation, right?
You're making decisions for me, but I wasn't included, or I don't understand why you're making these decisions for me. Tell me what this means, and no one's really taking the time to do that, and then I think you know our speakers come in, and then they're like pro AI, but our center has always taken the approach of not being pro AI, in that we are our goal is really just to provide people enough information so that they can make informed choices about whether or not they want to use AI, the what, the well, the what, the why, the how, and the where, like that's for people to make that I don't feel that we should remove that autonomy from any human being, and I think sometimes the booing is because that autonomy feels to be gone in those conversations.
Jeff Young:
Yeah, so that people feel like, and there is a very aggressive sales pitch right now by these AI companies. It's like everywhere you look, a new feature of your email, or whatever you're using, anyway, suddenly it's like you need to use this tier, where you're like, not even sure what it is,
Jessica Stansbury:
right? And that goes back to our skeptics. On our ecosystem that are like, show me the relevance here. Why do I need to use this? What's the point of it, right? So, what is the big question? I mean, and I hear people asking that often when you mention AI, they're like, so what am I going to do with that? Why?
Jeff Young:
Jessica, not only runs this center on community AI, she still leads the university's center for excellence in learning, teaching, and technology. So, I was curious to hear how she uses AI in her own work.
Jessica Stansbury:
Well, I'm in two dual director roles. So it amplifies my work. I kind of use it as help me organize this information if I need to make a report, which are tedious and they're long and they're not fun.
Jeff Young:
That's part of an administration job?
Jessica Stansbury:
That's right. So I'm going to use this tool that is now there, so that I can organize and create that report a lot faster. And then I have the outline and the structure and the data, so now I just have to go through the report, right? Nothing proprietary in these systems, but go through and kind of, you know, add my thoughts, augment the piece, make sure that it's mine, but that saves me hours than having to write two different reports for two different centers every quarter
Jeff Young:
About summarizing your goals?
Jessica Stansbury:
What have we done so far, and here, what are your metrics? And well, here's the table. Put this into a report, and then it gives me, and it is. It does take time. You have to verify, you have to check, you have to. I've found errors. You have to go back and be like, that's not what this data said. That looks weird.
Jeff Young:
It's not a magic device,
Jessica Stansbury:
Correct. So, it's still really important to have the human in the loop. I will say that until I'm out of breath, because I think sometimes the misconception is that AI will just do it all, but it can, but it's not going to be good, right? Like, you need to actually go back and make sure that what it's saying, and you can't do that unless you have that human subject expertise.
And I think you know academics, I can say this is a former academic that you know we build our whole identities around one specific discipline, and now you have this tool that comes along that can give knowledge. So, if you, as an academic, believe that you are the keeper of knowledge, yeah, you're really going to struggle with, like, even wanting to engage with this right, because it's threatening what you believe your identity is, but if you're a facilitator of knowledge and you're used to being a facilitator of knowledge, and that's your perception, then you might look at that and say, okay, I can give it that, because I don't hold all the information anyway,
Jeff Young:
and facilitator, say more about what you see, that is,
Jessica Stansbury:
So I used to teach social psychology. If I go into the classroom and believe that I am the only expert on social psychology, and even though I'm still just like professing what the other experts have once said, but if I believe that I am the keeper of all of that information, then I'm not facilitating it, I'm not. If I'm a facilitator, my goal is to provide autonomy to the students, to give them activities that will help them work and find that knowledge. So that's what I mean by facilitator. So I'm not the gatekeeper. There's other sources.
Jeff Young:
Back to this event, the summit, it seems like this is this is like enacting that and bringing these stakeholders together from the different sectors in the city, including professors, yeah, and students, and students.
Jessica Stansbury:
Yep, students will be there.
Jeff Young:
And so, what will these, you know, what do you hope comes out of it, the discussion, like, what is once they all do get in the room and talk, then what? Like, what do you, what do you hope comes out of it?
Jessica Stansbury:
So that's a great question. Our summit premise, like, the main question that I want everyone to think about while they're there and after they leave is, what can they do today with this information that they couldn't do yesterday? Okay, because I believe everybody, yeah, the so what, because everybody based on your sector can do something different with that information. If I'm an educator in that room and I see, okay, here are how the skeptics are approaching this information through persona work, you can say I probably got a few students in that, so now I understand them a little better. How do I interact with them?
So that's one way that someone might want to use that information. If you're industry and you're seeing, you know, your goal might be to go out and I don't know, build a data center, for example, then you might really want to pay attention to the builders who are already leading this initiative, and you also might want to pay attention to the labor, the guardians, because you're not getting anywhere unless you convince that group that this is good, correct? Right. So that informs them why now. Okay, I need.. I know how I can go out and start to engage with these people, because I have an understanding. So I believe it will.. it will depend. And on where they're coming from, but that would be the main takeaway question.
Jeff Young:
One thing that struck me most about this day-long summit was a discussion of where people even learn about AI. For many people, the news media might help shape their perception of AI, and that rarely gets into the nuts and bolts of how ordinary people are trying these tools, and of course, people do see a lot of things on social media, but they're often in their own filter bubbles. There were some interesting ideas floated at the town halls about how community groups could share concrete, practical uses of AI. One person suggested having a mobile AI bus that would drive around doing demos and answering questions, kind of like a bookmobile, but for AI literacy, I guess. Another suggested teaching AI literacy by going to barber shops.
Korey Bailey:
I love the barbershop example as well. That's a safe space, especially for black men. I'm generalizing, but for that paradigm shift, for those gentlemen to happen, that you were able to give them happened in a safe and trusted environment, and now you've gotten their ball rolling. You were like old prime for them, and now they're like, "Yo, guess what I learned at the barbershop this morning, and now then they become old prom for whoever's in there, you know, a constellation of humans that they are with, but it all starts with, like, where are we meeting people, and we want to make sure those environments are safe and trusting.
Jeff Young:
That's Korey Bailey, a consultant who focuses on what he calls ecosystem building and equitable economic growth, and he helped moderate one of the town halls.
He noted that a university lecture hall may not be the ideal place to really spread the word about AI to a whole community, and we all know what those look like. They're typically not rooms like this, or board rooms, they're dinner tables, or at restaurants, or sports events, or at concerts, or at your community center, your church, your gym, like, there are places where you go in and you're like, okay, I'm not workout avatar, Corey, I'm me. And then, if you can engage in these types of conversations in those environments, that gets you your juices going for how you might use and adopt this.
Jeff Young:
So, what would an ideal AI-enhanced community look like? I talked with some of the participants at this town hall and tried to get a sense of what is at stake in getting this right. All that after the break.
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Jeff Young:
I was curious to meet some of the people who turned up for these town halls, some of them were college students, and I was definitely interested in getting a student perspective for the episode. So, between sessions, I chatted with Kate Webb, a student at Christopher Newport University, who was in Baltimore interning for a research firm. During one of the town halls, this student talked about how most of her courses don't allow AI, but recently she was in a class in marketing where the professor did teach students how to incorporate AI, since that field is quickly adopting the tools. I asked for her take on how she saw AI impacting society more broadly.
Kate Webb:
I feel like there is a lot of good that can come from AI, but I also feel like if it's not used correctly, or we're not able to understand it correctly. I feel like people can not abuse it, but maybe not use it in the right way. But I feel like it really could help, like, so many communities, and just like everything we learned today, like helping the younger generation, because they are going to create so many new things for us. Like, I feel like technology is really going to advance, so I feel like it's a positive thing for our community.
Jeff Young:
And some participants showed up with big ideas of their own about how they would like to see the AI revolution managed for the public good. One idea that I had never heard before came from Deborah Charles, a consultant who is also taking classes at the University of Baltimore. She offered this during one of the town halls, but I approached her afterwards to get her to explain it to me. A new federal agency for AI. I look at AI as a disruption in the same way that we look at what FEMA does with physical crisis, except this is a digital crisis,
Deborah Charles:
And what we need is an agency that would manage that digital disruption. Where will people live? Do they need to move? Will they need additional training? How do we accommodate for what people will need as a result of AI, and I'm calling it a disaster. If we look at it as a disaster or a crisis or disruption. Today we have existing agencies that manage crisis when it's physical, but we don't have anything for when it's digital. So I am proposing that we create an office of AI disruption management, and this office would be managed much like FEMA is they would provide a lot of the same types of services, except the the incident that prompts the services would be related to AI disruption. It's an office of AI disruption. They would be responsible for education, they would be responsible for placement, they would be responsible for training any of the things, any of the areas where AI might disrupt this agency would be in place to support that, and much in the same way that FEMA operates with Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, this organization would do the same.
Jeff Young:
Jessica Stansbury, who led these town halls, went in expecting to hear plenty of negative and critical perspectives toward AI. She was born and raised in East Baltimore, and before she became a professor and college administrator, she worked as an addiction counselor for a decade, so she is used to having conversations with all kinds of people,
Jessica Stansbury:
So sitting with the career pathways that I've had over time as an addiction therapist for 10 years in the city, at least half of those years were in the city, we were very distrusting of government entities, I, for example, I went to a town hall recently on East Baltimore side, and the town hall is supposed to talk about internet, like how to read your internet bill, and it talked about the ID, the new government-issued ID that Mayor Scott had just promoted, and AI was supposed to be the last topic, which is why I went, because I was like, I really want to hear what the community is saying about AI, and I had beliefs before I went in there that probably a lot of distrust happening with AI, and we didn't even get to the AI part after an hour and 10 minutes, because we were still talking about the ID, and a lot of the conversation that came up in that had to do with trust. What are you doing with my information? Who gets to see this? What do you know for the two documents I have to show that I'm a citizen? What's happening to that information? Is this running through a database, and then the internet bill also people started talking about AI because they were talking about customer service and not being able to get through customer service anymore because it's AI and no people.
So then it's like AI is taking over the jobs, and what I learned through that is the same thing that I saw growing up as a child, is that it seems there are agendas everywhere, which there are in reality, but no one's clear or honest or upfront about what those agendas are, and the people that often get left behind are the people sitting in those town halls, and I used to be one of the people that was kids sitting in those town halls, so never actually went to one, but that would have been like where I came from. So, in that sense, I think we need to do a better job at transparency.
Jeff Young:
Yeah, I mean, it's a tall order.
Jessica Stansbury:
Oh, yeah.
Jeff Young:
It feels against the currents of our current administration and vibe in the country right now.
Jessica Stansbury:
Yes, it is. Yeah, yeah,
Jeff Young:
but you, you're still doing it. You believe in it, yeah? Because you think it'll.. you think this can actually.. you know, you can win trust here.
Jessica Stansbury:
Yeah, I mean, let's take something relevant to the AI conversation, like the data centers. I don't think people resist the technology alone or the data center. I think they don't understand it, and they see it right now as a negative force,
And there's no one telling them otherwise, that it's not, except for politicians. Community people don't always trust the politician.
So who can be the translator of that voice, and I feel like you, Ball and Callie, that's kind of what we do. We translate for the community.
Jeff Young:
These town halls are part of Jessica Stansbury's vision of harnessing AI across sectors in a way, she's using the same skills that she learned helping professors adapt to technology to help the larger community. As I talked with her, I kept wondering what her vision is of an AI-infused city and what is at stake for her.
Jessica Stansbury:
The more and more that I do and engage in this work, it is not a technology conversation anymore. It's a human conversation. There needs to be.. we've taken a very tech-centric approach to things, you know, when it comes to scaling up data centers, or, you know, efficiency, but we.. it needs to be a tech-centered, because that's important.
All of those things are important. We need those for our economy, but we also.. it's a yes end for the human-centered approach on asking the difficult questions, like who benefits from this. You know, Baltimore has a history of not being so good to its people, in that they do technology infrastructure and changes, and then they promise a lot, and say, like, we're gonna give you jobs, and then the people that were promised the jobs don't have the jobs, somebody else gets the job, so we need to get better at that, and I think this starts that conversation, so I can give you an example of what I would, I AI for public good, that I have a vision in my mind that nobody has done yet, and I think people haven't done it because they're afraid of it, because it involves people and protected private health information.
But right now we have lots of data around overdoses in Baltimore. We had a bad overdose last year, where a whole bunch of people at one time just dropped, and it was bad batch of drugs, basically, that got out, and we have something called an OD map, and that OD map actually connects to all of these various different agencies, so the morgue, for example, the police department, city, county, the health department, so all of these places are feeding it information constantly, and then what it does is it sends out like a spike alert, hey, overdose here, East Baltimore, we need to send people out, and then people get sent out, and you know, they talk with the community, and they kind of engage with the community, but to me that's happening way too late, we're doing after we're getting the alert after the overdoses happen, right, and it's gone.
So now drugs are just moving to a new part of the city, you know, like, okay, so overdose crash happened here, alert went out, people came, overdose moved on, new drug batch over here, so we've done education now, because the spike alert went out in that initial area. When there are lots of drugs, there's a drug right now called Trank, which is eats your flesh, like it's there's just a lot of really nasty drugs that are being created, and they're being created by man at the same time. Time by adding all of these different ingredients into natural drugs. I guess I would say so. When that happens, it's too late. We have AI technology now.
There is no reason why we cannot in real time identify where a spike alert is going to be before it happens, and then get to that place before it happens, or we have all of this wearable technology now. Why do we not have a wearable piece of technology that says when a person is about to overdose, and then we send out in real time intervention services before 10 people drop dead. Now I realize there are caveats related to all of those things, in that a wearable device is very challenging to create something that adapts to biometrics, and you have all this information feeding it in real time, but we have the technology to do that. And then someone might say, what makes you think that the substance users are going to wear this piece of technology? They don't want to be tracked, right, but also …
Jeff Young:
Like this new ID, or whatever. It's like people worry about that data,
Jessica Stansbury:
But those users also don't want to die. Every like, why do you think every substance user that uses opioids carries around Narcan? They can't even administer it to themselves necessarily once they start their overdose process, but they still have it in their pocket, just in case. So, I think, and this is where the trust and the access comes into place. You get the right people, you get the labor guardians who are protecting, or the guardians who are protecting that group of people to go in and sit with them. I bet you, you could walk out with them wearing some wearable devices, because they don't want to die like that is not their goal of drug use, for the most part.
So, to me, those are two examples of how we could actually use AI to serve the city better, and if we did that, we could reduce the drug use in the population, which then could potentially reduce some of the other problems we have, like homelessness or kids in the street, right? Because they don't, their parents might be addicted, and they're not paying it, like it, like systemic. Like, if we look at this from a system perspective, we could solve a lot of problems just by that one, and if we do have AI to do it, we just need the right people with the right expertise and the willingness to move it forward.
Jeff Young:
Wow, so you, this is.. I think about that a lot. This is like saving lives.
Jessica Stansbury:
Yes.
Jeff Young:
Bringing the tool to problem, you know, deeply.
Jessica Stansbury:
Yes, yeah. And I have actually talked with, I still have lots. I was in the field for 10 years. The burnout rate in the field is probably about two, and I still have people that I'm connected with that I trained in the field, and I've talked to them about this.
Like, am I being like way too rose-colored glasses? Is this not gonna work?
They're like, ‘No, I think that's a great idea, and we should do this, this, and this, but are those people coming to the table with the right people with the expertise in order to make something like that happen, and because it's like protected health information data, if you're thinking about the OD map and stuff, people don't want to mess with that, because there's so many obstacles and roadblocks, and I get that, but there's got to be a way, like there has to be a way, and if you take it through a university, so like Hopkins, for example, you're not getting it past the IRB board, like it would take years of research.
Jessica Stansbury:
And I'm not saying that we shouldn't have ethics involved in that conversation, but if you took the same thing to someone who already created wearables, like, you know, they have those Oura rings that do stuff like AI are coming to, yeah, devices right, and they don't have to go through the IRB, but what they do need is the trust and the right people in the community to work with those residents, and that's what they don't have, aside from everything I'm talking about right now, but I've been very passionate about that vision, because I really think we could do something so good for the city that would then trickle out, and we're just like stuck just talking about it, and we have to stop talking, and we have to start doing.
Jeff Young:
Will there be, will there be folks from these sectors at your forums tomorrow?
Jessica Stansbury:
Yeah, I mean, there are across all sectors, healthcare. I mean, I have spoken to a couple recently people interested in, like, health technology and wearable technology, and you know, I'm like, people are afraid to touch this. I had this really great idea, and I actually was working with an entrepreneur that we had in our Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, who is in our AI Accelerator Accelerator series, and she is working on something related to AI in healthcare and helping kind of that high-risk population be able to determine where there are risk marks for. People to kind of intervene with them, which she's been working on, that's her project. And I reached out to the center director over there, who co-sponsors our summit, and said, I have this really great idea. You know, anybody over there, because I just don't have the time, unfortunately, with everything else going on, to dedicate, like an entrepreneur needs to dedicate the time to be able to make those things happen, so I'm even willing to like work with right, like I don't even need to be part of the process, just enough to get the idea and the momentum flowing, because I just want to see good things happen for the city.
Jeff Young:
I definitely don't want to be a downer, but I know I suspect that some people in the audience might think it's a little, it is a little bit far-fetched to be able to break down these mistrusts, like when you have these personas.
Jessica Stansbury:
Yeah,
Jeff Young:
Do you imagine that the skeptic will suddenly be like, "Oh, okay, I'm, I'm like, okay with AI? I mean, you have these entrenched views, or these learned views from experience, your personas, and these actual people living in Baltimore.
Jessica Stansbury:
Yeah,
Jeff Young:
like, you know, what is the, the.. how can a forum make a difference? How can a center make a difference?
Jessica Stansbury:
I don't know that the forum will make that difference, like that, that stake, but I'd like to think that the center will eventually. That's my goal for the center, is to be able to make that stake, and I do think what the summit is showing us is how to reach those people, and I do, and I go back to what I said before, like the literacy is so important, the relevance is there. You know, what we found through this user persona work is that it's no one's actually like AI is bad. No one's saying that on the spectrum. They're asking other questions, like we need to make sure we understand unintended consequences. We need time to evaluate these tools. Unfortunately, we don't have the time at the pace of the innovation, but that's what that group wants. And then we need to understand why the so what? Why is this relevant? Why do I need to know that? But I bet you, if you told those skeptics like this could be something that saved somebody's life, so what now becomes relevant? So it's about what people care about is what we're learning through the skeptics and the guardians, the ones that it's not really just about protecting the workforce or the jobs, it's about protecting the people.
So you get now a guardian to go out and work with the community and say, like, hey, here's AI in a way that it could actually save your life. Whole conversation changes, but what it takes is the workshops, the access, like people don't have access to even experiment with it and play with it.
So, what I learned from an institution side when we started all this AI work, and we have a spectrum here at the university as well, so let's just be transparent about that, and the ones that are on the, like, anti-AI sides. In the beginning, they weren't touching it, they weren't even playing. It was like on principle alone, this kills the environment. I'm not doing it, but then when they started to play with it. The more the summit started to happen, and they started hearing from industry, like, hey, they're going to need to know how to use this in a skill. And if we.. I think it's important to always remind faculty why we're faculty, and that is to serve the students, right? Like, not necessarily serve ourselves, but to serve our students. And if that is our mission, then we would do them a disservice if we don't teach them when to use it and when not to use it, so it's not all about like, yes, every class needs to have AI or every piece of curriculum, it's about knowing when that integration makes sense, so it's the same same process, right? Like, what is the relevance? Why do I need to integrate it in this ethics class, or why do I need to integrate it in this game design class? Well, if you have that, so what? Then it becomes a different conversation.
Jeff Young:
There was something very hopeful and refreshingly optimistic about these AI town halls. I don't think anyone really changed their mind, but there were lots of ideas, and a lot of different people shared their hopes and dreams, but the experience also reminded me of how many people end up getting left out of discussions about AI, especially as it rolls out and changes so quickly.
I would love to hear your thoughts. Should more colleges lead forums like this? What is the best way to encourage broader discussions about how to deploy and use AI? If you have thoughts, I'd love to hear from you. You can shoot me a note to jeff@learningcurve.fm
This has been LearningCurve.
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