Embracing Ethical & Responsible AI Use in Higher Education

Alicia Plant:

Just yesterday I read an article from Inside Higher Education that gave some interesting data from 2100 public participants. They asked the question, who do you trust with AI? And we, higher education edged out other industries. So 49% voted that they trust higher education to handle AI most responsibly. We tied with the healthcare industry and coming up a little bit behind us was law enforcement. So I want to tie my approach to AI to that, that I approach AI first responsibly as best as possible using the data available and also ethically. I prioritize the ethics of engagement and the responsibility of it over the innovation piece. I also approach it through the data. I stay connected to the credible data that comes to us from our higher education publications as well as some of the techies. I’m a big fan of Google Cloud Next, the CEO constantly publishes and just on Tuesday, he published a great article related to the generative AI use and how it’s advancing forward in our industries. So those would be my approaches to AI.

Jenny Gordon:

Thank you. You’re right. You’re including some big words there and things that we’re all thinking around ethics and the like. Julie, how would you add to that?

Julie Hollenbeck:

I think that was a wonderful response and I really can relate to it. I think maybe to add just a little bit, my philosophy is evolving and it’s changing. It almost seems daily right now as we’re learning more about it. So keeping an open mind as to the benefits and the challenges, and I think it’s great that people are looking at higher ed as a leader in sort of demonstrating how we should appropriately use AI. And so I think for me, trying to keep a very supportive environment for my students to try it, but then also helping to guide them ethically, technically, and practically on how to use it responsibly is kind of part of my philosophy.