Ohio State University Skeptical Faculty, but hope of the new AI education initiative

Ohio State University teachers are skeptical, but hope that a new initiative to increase control of artificial intelligence could help advance the use and understanding of new technology in education.

The university announced last week that it wanted the 45,000 undergraduate students to graduate with a master's degree in artificial intelligence. The university said that all students will have to learn to use AI in their lessons starting with the fall semester.

OSU art teacher, Chris Coleman, said that he could delay teaching students how to use AI, but he said that the university would be about to determine whether AI becomes a useful tool or a creative crutch.

“It's a large group of students to manage this experience,” said Coleman. “But I don't think that you can ignore (IA). So I appreciate it daring and that it will be tempted.”

From the fall semester, Ohio State plans to integrate the education of AI into the heart of each class, from computer to agriculture. Students will also learn the ethics of the use of the tool.

Ohio State said in a press release last week that starting with the promotion of 2029, each Buckeye graduate will commonly report the AI ​​and how it can be applied responsible for advancing your domain.

“Artificial intelligence transforms the way we live, work, teach and learn. In the not so distant future, each job, in each industry, will be touched in one way or another by AI,” said the president of the state of Ohio, Walter, “Ted” Carter Jr. in a press release.

Carter said Ohio State had the opportunity and the responsibility to prepare students to follow and open the way for the impact of AI on the workforce of the future.

“I am so happy that we do this daring step to prepare our students for success and keep the competitive ohio in the long term. We have a solid basis on which to build, and the initiative of mastery of AI will only accelerate our momentum in research and education focused on the mission,” said Carter.

Regarding artistic education, Coleman said that students could use AI to help inspire physical art forms such as sculpture and painting. Regarding digital work as well as IT animation or coding, AI could potentially be used to do all the work, creating ethical concerns.

“We are quickly trying to understand things as if it is always worth making an ultra real framework animation, or are we to the point where we can really somehow a carpet of animation, connect these images which quickly made images in AI and get better results and save energy,” said Coleman.

Coleman said he would teach a general AI arts class which, according to him, led people to think more in a creative way to use AI for art beyond the simple fact of saying to AI as Chatgpt to make an image.

“What it looks like if you nourish him the lyrics of a song, it transforms it into an image. This image then rewinds a new song, then this song actually becomes food for another model that generates a video,” said Coleman. “I think there are really interesting processes that can be built.”

Coleman said he was concerned about how this technology can take jobs. He stressed that when computers were invented for the first time, work that was carried out by mathematicians was taken up by computers.

Coleman gave the example of women who helped manage complex mathematical equations for NASA.

“For me, the most important thing is that students understand where AI comes from, how it works and how to make intelligent decisions about the opportunity to use it or not for everything they do in life,” said Coleman. “This is the kind of literacy that I can be late is being well informed enough to make an intelligent choice on the use of AI.”

Elizabeth Hewitt, president of the English department of Ohio State, said that she liked to use the comparison of AI in academics at the debate on the mathematics calculator for decades ago. As the calculator, she said that some considered AI as a tool that can be used to help students improve and innovate their work.

Hewitt said teachers discovered in 2022 that more students used AI to help write their articles partially or entirely. She said it led to an increase in complaints to the Ohio State academic misconduct committee.

Hewitt said at the time that AI “hallucinated” or put incorrect information and used language in a strange way. Since then, Hewitt has said that AI had learned and has become more sophisticated and much more difficult to detect.

“I think that with the next generation, algorithms have improved and more sophisticated. And so it's less easy to see. There was never really infallible means of detecting the use of AI anyway,” said Hewitt.

Hewitt said in English, she wanted students to know how to use it in the most ethical, responsible and productive way possible without using AI to do all their work for them.

Hewitt said that it was skeptical about the amount of AI will ultimately be able to replace the fundamental knowledge taught in courses for subjects like English and art.

“I think a lot of defenders (of AI), real believers, people who will also earn a lot of money, they give the impression that it will be our new world in which this kind of knowledge is not necessary. I have trouble understanding what it will look like,” said Hewitt.

Hewitt said Ohio State wanted students to criticize these difficult issues about AI. She said it can determine how far the use of AI can go without replacing the need for creativity and human thought.