Many of you will still have reservations and fears about the use of AI in the classroom, and that’s okay. There are areas of legitimate concern that need to be addressed. This is also an area of technology that is constantly evolving, which means it is difficult to predict where things will end up. The reality is that generative AI will only get better and is likely to become more interconnected with the technologies we already use. We encourage you to continue exploring novel applications as they develop and think creatively about how they can be used to support and augment the work you’re already doing. As we consider this technological horizon it may also be beneficial to look outward to its impact on other industries and forward into possible advances in this technology.
Professional Use
Embedded Bias
Generative AI answers queries by searching through the databases available to them. This means that their responses can reproduce any biases that exist within the databases they use. For example, you may remember in 2015 when Google developed an AI designed to classify images, but it mistakenly classified many Black faces as gorillas due to training the AI using mostly images of white people.
We tend to assume that AI acts objectively because there’s no human thinking involved, but in reality, AI systems are only as objective as the programming and data they are trained on. AI has the potential to enhance the work in many fields, but it is important to be cautious in adopting new AI technologies. For example, the medical field has many well known biases such as a lack of visual representation of non-white patients and pain being taken less seriously in women than in men. It is therefore unsurprising that there has been racial bias detected in systems designed to help medical professionals make diagnoses.
Generative A.I. function by looking at available content holistically to find patterns and connections. This is much like what the human brain does every day, but on a more intense scale. These A.I. therefore offer more opportunity for professional use than simply creating art and writing essays. These are some of the ways that generative artificial intelligence can, will, and is being used in professions to assist in decision making.
- Medical Diagnosis
- Medical imagery must be evaluated by medical professionals to find outliers by comparing the image to their knowledge of what healthy images are supposed to look like. In a similar way, generative A.I. can be trained to identify outliers by giving them a large database of healthy vs unhealthy images. While the A.I. is unlikely to completely replace medical professionals, it is a useful way of augmenting their abilities. Maybe there is a microtumor that someone missed? A shadow that might have been attributed to imaging problems but the A.I. has connections of similar shadows and a medical diagnosis. Generative A.I. (mixed with other forms of A.I.) can assist in filling in the gaps and providing medical commentary for us to evaluate further.
- Criminal Justice
- When someone witnesses a crime it is up to their memory and the talent of an artist to try and get a facial match that is as close as possible. Generative A.I. has assisted in creating profiles of individuals based upon characteristics of the assailant. These A.I. can take simplistic human face models and create colored and detailed profiles of individuals that you might not suspect were ever crafted by a computer. From there, the witness can discuss and augment details to further increase facial recognition.
- Increased Audio and Visual Media
- We have been there: you take a picture of something important and due to the motion of the subject or our hands, blurring happens. Or maybe something we recorded has background noise or peaking that messes with the sound of our voice. We already have simplistic correction in phones and cameras to reduce the impact of these issues, but generative A.I. has tools to sharpen, enhance, and improve resolution. That blurry image you took of a car driving past gets touched up based on the queries and conversations that you have with the A.I. program. You might even ask it what it thinks of the new music you created?
- Accessibility
- Images and text that we create are not accessible for everyone. Different individuals see different colors, hear different sounds, see with different clarity and so on. Generative AI is being developed to take existing images and enhance clarity, adjust color, and translate the content in many other ways to enhance accessibility. This can allow students to take the content you create and tailor it to their specific needs. It is still essential for instructors to take steps to create content that is as accessible as possible, but the ability for individuals to get more out of the content we create brings a bit of excitement to the experience.
As you can see, AI is developing quickly to help in a many different professional fields. We encourage you to explore what might be available in your areas of expertise to augment your creative and professional work.
If you have additional concerns about your own course and would like assistance with making any updates you may be considering, we encourage you to reach out to the instructional designer assigned to your unit.