As part of his course, he’s teaching students to be fluent in AI, so they’re prepared for the workforce and is bringing AI into course activities to help students improve their public speaking, writing and teamwork skills.
Ebert said that through the “AI in a Domain” leadership cohort, UA is coming up with guidelines on who gets to make decisions about how AI should be incorporated into a given class, course or degree.
“You can have two faculty members who come at the same topic from different perspectives and backgrounds, that see the role of AI differently,” Ebert said. “We’re trying to set a baseline and guidelines for people to decide those principles effectively, and they’ll be reflected in the requirements for the degree and every faculty. And that will be done individually by department and by college.”
AI use in research
As for the incorporation of AI into research, Ebert said, “We have our AI innovation pilots, where people across the university can apply, whether they’re looking at the operations of the university, doing something new and interesting in their classroom, or trying to take and introduce machine learning or large language models or some technique into their research to help them become more effective.
“We evaluate those, and we have a staff of 25 people who can work with them for six months to help them get that prototype and figure out how to deploy it in the systems they’re doing.”
Ebert said that while bringing in AI exploration, it’s important to also consider privacy and data security.
‘A cultural change’
Ebert said he doesn’t think AI can replace the academic instruction that faculty members and universities offer students. Faculty instruction is key, and there’s much information that a faculty member can provide that an AI tool cannot, he said. AI is just another learning aid, like having a tutor in your class or having an introductory lab assistant that helps with research, he said.