Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning

235 I may not be ­ there yet, but I am closer than I was yesterday. Misty Copeland, Principal dancer, American Ballet Theater We are in the Altavista/Lycos/Ask-­ Jeeves/WebCrawler phase of AI, and much is left to unfold. New tools arrive ­ every day, but they may soon be replaced with a small number of big winners . Some key players, such as Apple, have yet to come to market , though they say they are investing heavi­ ly in this space (Perez, 2023). Gordon Moore (Intel’s co-­founder) made a surprisingly accurate prediction in the 1960s that ­there would be an exponential growth in chip speed that would mirror similar improvements in chip size (Moore’s Law; Stoner, 2023). Continued improvements in ­ these domains ­ will mean that this type of AI, which has high resource demands, ­ will increasingly move beyond the confines of your browser win­ dow and become progressively more pervasive in other contexts. As AI gets closer to the full range of attributes we value in ­ human intelligence, it’s also­ going to be found everywhere. Epilogue Bowen_AI_int_5pgs.indd 235 Bowen_AI_int_5pgs.indd 235 16/02/24 4:27 PM 16/02/24 4:27 PM Learning with AI 236 What about higher education’s ­ future in this new era? Many topics that exceeded the scope of this book still need urgent discussion: What campus functions (advising, admissions, financial aid, security, ­ etc.) could change with AI? Who ­ will decide? What about jobs, ethics and privacy? Where should we resist? Can we? Given AI’s ability to monitor tremendous amounts of data, it ­ will soon be a dependable predictive tool for student success. If books and calculators changed ­human thinking capacities, what ­ will AI do? ­ Will AI impact classrooms? ­ We’ve long argued (Bowen, 2012; Bowen & Watson, 2017) that physical classrooms should be focused on ­human interactions. What ­will it mean to get a real-­ time phone analy­ sis of your last classroom remarks? Like it or not, ­ there are already phones listening to our classroom conversations: Can we ban AI from classrooms (and for how long), or could we benefit from its feedback and analy­ sis?­ Will students soon be getting daily or hourly coaching from AI bots reminding them that an assignment is due, advising them on their most effective way to study, and predicting that at the current rate of study they are headed for a C-­in your class? ­Will faculty get alerts that the AI has sent supportive messages to three students on their behalf ­ today? Could AI deliver and assess courses? We ­ will always need­ human teachers, but at many large universities, first-­ year students mostly interact with TAs. Georgia Tech has already demonstrated that an AI TA can feel more ­ human and responsive than a ­human TA. Might institutions both save money and improve quality with some AI-­ delivered courses? If so, what does that mean for the preparation of the next generation of professors? Many pos­si­ble and probable changes have interconnected and cascading implications. Bowen_AI_int_5pgs.indd 236 Bowen_AI_int_5pgs.indd 236 16/02/24 4:27 PM 16/02/24 4:27 PM [209.94.61.25] Project MUSE (2025-02-16 15:34 GMT) Epilogue 237 What is ahead of us in terms of academic integrity? As AI becomes better at writing with dif­fer­ ent voices at dif­fer­ ent levels for dif­fer­ent audiences, AI detection ­will likely become even less effective than it currently is. Policies and practices should be­ adopted that embrace this real­ ity.­ There is so much to ponder about where AI should be used or controlled, and many lessons to learn from how social media , GPS, and the Internet of ­ Things snuck into our lives. But like email and the internet, it is ­ here, and it is ­ going to become a part of modern life. You need to start playing and working with AI. Key Themes • AI is ­ going to change working and thinking. • AI is a new baseline for average or adequate. • AI is a tool that can elevate the creativity and productivity of every­ one. • AI is only ­ going to get better and more ubiquitous: specialized AI tools are about to proliferate. • Faculty need to adapt with new policies, assignments, and assessments: AI detection ­ will not be enough nor entirely dependable. • All students ­ will need AI literacy and ­ will need to be able to use AI as a partner and collaborator. AI offers a large set of new tools...