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Since the dissemination of a resource document on artificial intelligence to professors last year, AI has continued to be integrated into classrooms. At “CTLE Conversation: Teaching with Artificial Intelligence” Tuesday morning, professors Melanie Haas and Regina Luttrell presented examples of assignments from their course curriculums that require students to use AI.

Haas, a writing studies, rhetoric and composition assistant professor, shared the three major writing projects involving AI that she assigned to her Writing 105 students last semester. At the time, Haas said she had minimal experience with AI and was “jumping in with both feet.”

SU administrators compiled a resource document, which was last updated in January, to establish guidelines and address commonly asked questions regarding AI. Individual schools across SU’s campus, such as the College of Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Information Studies, have begun implementing AI into classes.

Students enrolled in Computer and Information Science 151 will soon have access to a 24/7 ChatGPT personal teaching assistant, and the iSchool launched Information Studies 300: AI and Humanity last fall.

In Haas’ course, students used AI to write the rough draft of their first major project and were instructed to focus on the benefits and drawbacks of the tool as they saw it appear in their work, Haas said.

Students were coming to their conclusions about AI as they were using it to write their projects, which raised questions about ethics and biases. Haas said students were “shocked” at their findings.

A Bloomberg study, which analyzed more than 5,000 images generated by Stability AI between December 2022 and February 2023, found the generator “amplified” stereotypes relating to race and gender, according to the New York Times. The study found AI typically depicted people with lighter skin tones as holding “high-paying jobs” while subjects with darker skin tones were “labeled ‘dishwasher’ and ‘housekeeper.’”

“You can do something that makes your life easier and it’s still not ethical,” Haas said. “How do we not know that AI doesn’t recognize Black women’s photos — that they identify them as men?”

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Luttrell, a senior associate dean and associate professor of public relations at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said she has incorporated AI into her teaching for a couple of years. She said the field her students are going to “graduate into” will require knowledge of how to use these programs.

Pathmatics AI is one of the most widely advertised tools for PR practitioners, Luttrell said. With this form of generative AI, users can create articles, blog posts and social media content. She said it can also rewrite content and produce generative photos and videos.

“Our students are going to graduate into a field where an organization, agency or company is going to purchase seats or keys to a tool like (Pathmatics AI), so they need to understand how to use it now,” Luttrell said.

Luttrell designed an assignment for her class where students were required to use AI to co-write an article with ChatGPT. She said only five students out of 20 used ChatGPT because they were “fearful” of being accused of plagiarism.

“I think, as a university, that’s something that we need to be aware of and understand. They’re not using these tools because of all the fears of them,” Luttrell said.

Citing her experience as an AI beta tester, Luttrell said AI is only growing and “becoming more and more prevalent.” She referenced Arizona State University, which announced on Jan. 18 that it is the first university to have an enterprise relationship with OpenAI. Its entire campus is using it for research inside and outside of the classroom, she said.

“I think it is fascinating and scary,” Luttrell said. “Academia tends to go a little slower so we’re looking at the rearview mirror instead of looking ahead.”

Published on February 13, 2024 at 11:37 pm

Contact Claire: cksamsta@syr.edu