TCNJ

35 SPRING 2023 Humans, Yoon worries, who use AI as an accomplice for cybercrimes, for instance. Or humans, as Professor Kevin Michels worries, who use it to spread lies cloaked as truth. "I'm increasingly taken by its power, and increasingly concerned by some of the implications," says Michels, the founding director of the business school's Center for Innovation and Ethics. "If you ask a chatbot about a historic event or scientific claim, it may draw from a vast array of statements, not all of which are credible," he says. "And how do we distinguish true from false in an answer that is authoritative looking?" New technology, Michels notes, of- ten brings dangers alongside benefits: Cars moved us quickly but left carnage in our roads. "The history of techno- logical introduction tells us that we would do well to reflect before we deploy," he says. "But AI is like an arms race now, and every company is going to do everything they can to get out the next iteration, so there's not going to be a lot of deliberation before release." S o can AI be a partner instead of an adversary? As a high school chess team veteran, Michels sees a hopeful model in the aftermath of chess champion Garry Kasparov's 1997 loss to a computer. "One of the unsung stories is that over time we discovered that while a machine can beat the best player on the planet, the best player on the planet, coupled with a machine, is actually better than the machine," he says. Working together — that's a strategy he's trying in his Innovation class this semester, asking students to first use the chatbot to teach themselves about five different technologies. "And then phase two is to talk about how those technologies could be brought together in an interesting way to create something that's valuable in the world," he says. "I think it's critical for us in the higher education community to ask foundational questions about what education should look like in light of the power of these tools and their extrapolated future," Michels says. "Could AI be individualized in a way that could make it tremendously valuable as a teacher? Is this the great democratization of learning?" Kuiphoff thinks so. "I think it could force higher education to be better," he says. He has always worked at the far edge of technology, using comput- ers to make actual things — he held up an engraved brass piece for a 3D printed drum set as an example — but after he spent a feverish week while housebound with COVID-19 over win- ter break testing what ChatGPT could do, he speaks of it with an evangelical fervor. He uses it to code programs, to help him write articles, to generate dozens of design protypes for objects he's making, and he envisions students using it for what he calls decentralized self-directed learning. "When I really got to intimately work with these technologies and John Kuiphoff / Image: FaceApp push their boundaries to the limit, I realized that people just don't understand how powerful this is and how much is going to change within the next couple of years," he says. "This might be bigger than the internet itself." But that syllabus he asked ChatGPT to write for him? He ended up not using it. "It was a better syllabus than I could ever write, but it wasn't mine," he says. It gave him some direction and ideas and readings, which he then adapted into something that was his own. "I like my syllabus to be a little less syllabus-y." I turn to Kuiphoff and ChatGPT again to help conclude the story, to launch readers into their own round of further inquiry and contemplation. Kuiphoff types: "What should the last paragraph be?" "In conclusion TCNJ's proactive approach to embracing AI is an essential step towards shaping the future of higher education and ensuring its students are well-prepared for an increasingly AI-driven world." It goes on for two more word-salad sentences, still sounding like a pro- crastinating student who has run out of both caffeine and ideas. Not much of an ending, so let's try another question: How will it answer once it has read this story — or, more precisely, ingested the information in it? Will it sound more intelligent, more insightful, more human? Will it give us even more occasion to hope, or to fear, or both? ■ Kevin Coyne is a freelance writer who teaches at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

• Cover