Preparing Students for Work in an AI-Driven World

Presenter:

Dr. Frempong is a seasoned leader at Blassys Organization, where she currently serves as President, overseeing financial operations, educational projects, and media production. She is also the innovative mind behind the Let’s Explore Africa Quiz Show, a trivia competition designed to educate participants about the diverse cultures and landscapes of Africa. 

Sandra holds a Ph.D in Advanced Accounting and an MBA in Accounting. Her previous roles include serving as an Assistant Professor of Accounting at Lincoln Memorial University and as adjunct faculty at New England College. In addition she holds a CPA license. Her dedication to finance, education, and media shines through her impactful work.

Transcript:

Heather Lund:

I am pleased to introduce Dr. Sandra Frempong, president of the Blassys Academy in North Carolina. Welcome Dr.Frempong.

Sandra Frempong:

Thank you. Let me share this screen. Hello everyone. My name is Sandra Frempong. I am the president of Blassys Academy, where we offer courses in different languages. I have experience in accounting and mainly in academia, but pre-K, K through 12, but mainly in higher education. The focus today on our discussion is preparing students for work in an AI-driven world. Because we have to navigate on the future of works for our students, and to be sure that they are prepared to function properly when it comes to all the changes going on. And the key highlights on preparing student is because we have increasing integration of AI technologies in the workforce, which necessitated that we have to be proactive in approaching and preparing our student to be successful, because the job market is evolving. So today’s student needs to blend the technical skills they have to be adaptable and be able to employ their critical thinking, so that they can thrive when they get to the job market.

We’ve all heard about AI, AI or which stands for artificial intelligence. What is it and how long has it been around? There are different definitions, but they’re all saying the same thing. So AI is the intelligence of machine or software as opposed to the intelligence of human or animal. Others have described it as something that’s been incorporated through trial and error activity developed through repeated simulation. It is a field of study in computer science that develops and studies intelligence machine, or a broad branch of computer science that is focused on machine capability to produce rational behavior from external inputs. Who coined AI and how long has it been around? This will have been a good polling question, but we don’t have any, so don’t worry. Because we are hearing more, to hear all the crescendos regarding AI, it’s mainly after COVID. But it’s been around for a long, long time. And to guess the person credited for coining AI is John McCarthy, a computer scientist and he did so in 1956. Can you imagine that? Almost seven decades ago. But it’s not something that we’re all talking about a lot until recently.

What prompted this? They had a presentation at that conference, and decide that there should be a way to use this computer [inaudible 00:03:23] and gathering information. How about we can actually create something that will perform tasks that typically will require human intelligence and so the intentions of the founders… Or by the way, he had other collaborator and they also should be recognized, and that will be Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon. What were the intentions of the founders, the goal for them was to develop machines that can accomplish what human can in terms of reasoning.

And they plan to do this through reactive machines, limited memory theory of mind and self-awareness. So when we talk about AI, there are different types of in terms of capability and functionalities. The capability looks at the narrow AI, the general AI, and the super AI. And based on functionality we look at on the reactive machines, they went with limited memory, theory of mind and self-awareness.

So for the artificial narrow intelligence, which is the most popular right now in terms of what we’re exposed to, it performs singular task and theory of mind. For instance, Siris that we have on the Apple, Alexa with Amazon. And if you’re a Jeopardy fan, Watson of IBM took on Ken Jennings, and actually defeated Ken Jennings in the return of tournament of champions, which is a feat. Because you would think that someone who had such record cannot be defeated, but it was defeated by Watson. But Ken Jennings is still standing, he’s hosting the show.

Then we also have a lot of other virtual assistances, drones image recognition, and then now with artificial general intelligence, that’s the deep or the stronger AI, which mimics human intelligence and behaviors and can learn an apply sense to solve a lot of problems. For instance, if you have text and you want to create 22 videos or come up with pictures, DALL·E can do that.

Claude can help in terms of language interpretation and actually do presentations in different languages. And the general one can also be used in terms of trading and it has been used. The artificial super intelligence though is the one that we’re not up to yet, and a lot of people are questioning about that because that will really has the threat of replacing us. And when you start hearing the likes of Elon Musk questioning us to be careful with what we’re doing with AI, then you know that something is up. But young people like Mark Zuckerman he say, “Oh no, nothing to worry about. It’s here and it will grow.” Well, the ones based on functionality will do reactive modes. Those are some of the things that we see with spam filters, chat box, recommendation engines like Spotify and Netflix. Then you have on the limited memories like on ChatGPT, which can also be applied in theory of mind save driving cars and virtual assistants.

And for the theory of mind this actually understand the need for intellectual entities can start reasoning. The self-aware is human-like which is an area that is considered long shot, and that something that we should be very careful in being mindful.

Where are we when it comes to AI? The narrow, we are already there with Siris, with clap-on. If some of you remember especially something designed for elders, they don’t have to get up and they just clap, and the light will turn on back and forth. Most people have Alexa, we talk to our computer sometimes and sometimes they read things to us. Then we have the AGI, the general. So we’re currently in terms of technology, we are up to the machine intelligence right now. So we are treading carefully on the machine consciousness. The key thing is that it’s not so much about where we are, it’s just that there’s so much going on every single day that it’s almost impossible to catch up.

Just when you think that, oh, you’ve mastered this, you know how to use that, you can use DALL·E. You can go into your Canva, and ask it to draw something for you and that person will look at you like, “You’re still using that. Really? We already have something that we do all the things for us.”

So when we have all these advanced technologies and things that they can do to make life simple and we’re in the classroom teaching students from the textbook, well, then we need to change the game of how we present and prepare them, so that when they’re out of the classroom they can survive. Because companies are looking to enhance some productivity, and if they’re using AI to improve their value propositions, student need to know how to be part of that success. Because nobody goes into business to lose money. So having customer improves profitability.

So when you get in there, you want to be part of that profitability of the bottom line. And of course if you know how to do this, that will boost employment because there is rapid expansion. As much as people complain about, it’s not just people as much as we’re all afraid of AI when it comes to it as one door closes in terms of what it does to eliminate certain positions, it also creates an expansion in other field. So students need to be aware of this so that they can explore other options and prepare themselves, and also acquire highly educated employees. And of course AI with internet, knowledge is no longer limited to people within your area or within your borders. Now you have to compete with the global community. So it’s super important to really know that students have to be privy to some of the things that are developing because just as we are learning here in the United States or in Canada or just America continent as a whole, you also have people in Africa, Asia and Europe learning the same thing.

AI is improving existing technologies and resources and some of us will remember the days of having to go somewhere and you will be calling 411 to get information on how to navigate. Well, that improved and led to people going to the gas station to get maps to get to where they need to go. But then from mapping, someone is thinking, “Why do I have to keep on going to the gas station at 7-Eleven to buy maps? Well, Garmin listened to you and decided to design GPS navigation system, and that used to be like a fantastic Christmas gift. But somebody is always thinking that is nice to have, it’s portable, you get to plug it. God forbid the battery runs down, but now what do we have? For newer cars the GPS is the standard within most cars. And where else are we using AI for students to just know the importance of having some of these things, how we’ve migrated?

Being that accounting is my background, I’m very passionate to this topic because of how it has changed how we conduct accounting in accounting. Why do we need AI? Because accounting can be very tedious and most people actually because, and it’s supposed to be boring and we have different nicknames because of that pencil pushers, CPAs, cheapest person alive, but it’s not so much that the people achieve, it’s just that because of the repetitive nature of the tasks that needed to be done. So before you have on spreadsheets and with shortage of CPAs in the pipeline, the big fours are shipping jobs across the board and then with COVID it actually changed the landscape of how work is going to be done because for accountants, when reflect and you look at the debt recorded during COVID, people start evaluating their life and thinking there had to be something more to just crunching numbers.

So how has it improving in the accounting field before? What you see right here is handwritten spreadsheet and that’s exactly what is it. Column paper and you have debits, credit and pulleys listed. Well, things got better and someone decided to do, Microsoft decided to come up with Excel or Lotus it was called at the time. From Lotus, we got into QuickBooks because with Excel or Lotus you still have to type in all this information, and then pass the information on, then recreate the same sheet that you already have to create different financial reports.

Well, with QuickBooks you just have to enter a transaction and we populate to other area, but now we even have a stack up and that’s even more upgraded than QuickBooks. Like I said, because of shortage of accounting, you have on the big fours moving jobs abroad to India in particular, and they’ve done millions of that. Some of the specific tools used in accounting they are ChatGPT.

Most people are familiar with their ChatGPT in terms of having texts, and asking it to look things up, or you type something and ask for information, and then you receive it and you have to digress, and make some changes on your own if need be. But ChatGPT does more than that. In accounting you can actually upload information from your financial data and ask ChatGPT to analyze the relative information for you. So employers or owners of businesses can do the same thing. Because accountants generally will give information that their clients need and then explain the information. But come on, we all know that sometimes you have so much going on, you don’t remember all of these things.

The he same client can go back and import this information and ChatGPT will provide notes and analyze the financial statement and say, this figure represent this and this is for that, and this is how you do and give comparative information which is threatening.

Beyond doing that with ChatGPT, there’s also TaxGPT, which most of you may not be familiar with if you’re not in the accounting field. TaxGPT is more or less like the AI tax, and what it does is it’s perfect for this time of the year when taxes are being prepared. And sometimes some people have 1040EZ that can be completed in a jiffy.

But then you also have complicated tax situations and scenarios. With the AI tax or TaxGPT, they can actually look up tax rulings, recent tax ruling and it will pull up how a particular situation was resolved by the IRS or at a tax court. And the accountant then can use this information to prepare accurate returns and have defensible trail if there’s ever an audit. So what’s the benefit? You get the maximum tax advantage in terms of refund, or pay the least legally possible on your tax on liability.

Then we also have SurePrep, which is even going beyond just entering in QuickBooks. This actually will read, it’s been trained to read emails, to read documents and it will extract information and then transport them to tax firms. And so all companies just have to do is have them review the report. But sometimes there’s even the review section of that, that is being upgraded. IRS also is using AI with $688 billion in tax gap, meaning that the money that they should have collected and the money that they actually collected. So the IRS has a deficit of 688 billion in 2021.

So they’re also using AI to close the gap, and to get people who have not been prepared. So people may be getting notices that they’re not aware of. You have on the fraud detection we get that all the time when we want to make a purchase instantly, the bank will contact you and ask you to approve it. Well, that is part of the AI that they have in place to detect certain things so that they can be done on the crime involved on fraud.

So in general accounting, the traditional accounting is no longer, it’s not caught in it, because it’s just not the way things should be running anymore. One of the companies that’s actually doing more beyond the individual tools of accounting is Docyt, which I have right here. And it’s more or less like a stack what we call a stack.

So instead of traditionally when you get to a business, you will go to the accounting department and then you go to the payable or the receivable or payroll, you don’t have that anymore. You don’t need to navigate four different offices or four different people. With Docstack they combined everything, the revenue, the expenses, the bank feed, collect all the information, and in real time they can generate financial report. There’s no longer waiting for, “Oh, we have to close the book.” Or, “We’ve closed the book. You have to wait for the next accounting period.”

The KPI also dashboard metrics. You can read that to see all the statistics and the graph to explain. And this information will be pushing to QuickBooks for further distribution to those who may need information perhaps on external users. So that’s accounting for you. And like I said I’m partial because that’s my field. Where else do we have AI and why is this still important? Because we also have it in agriculture. We all love to eat, don’t we? But how many of us want to go to the farm? It’s not that we don’t like harvesting, the AI is helping to do that now. It’s not that we are afraid of pests so much. People are afraid of pests. Some people we jump and scream when they see spider or do anything.

There’s an AI that can help to detect, and how to control that or even disease of animals, or some of the plants that they have in detecting it, or even enhancing the forecasting on the weather forecast and other logistics that they need for distribution and harvesting. The one thing, one of the main things that I know that people are afraid of when it comes to farming is dealing with wide animals.

So with AI, they have something robot out there that they can use to locate and control wide animal. Whether you control them is one thing. At least you want to locate them and know what to do in terms of catching up and running away from them if you know how to drive them away from your farm so they don’t actually destroy the crops or at least not harm you in a very bad way, because some can actually kill people.

In entertainment Tyler Perry said he had initially allocated $800 million to improve the sound and the stage section of his studio in Atlanta, at least the main one is in Atlanta. But he’s been told that, “Oh, AI can do this, some of these things that you want to expend money on.” But when he saw it, he was so blown away that he had to suspend it. So in AI he said being told that it can do all things is one thing, but to actually see the capability just blew his mind.

You have the Open AI Sora that you have text and it goes into video. You have things that can write transcripts and edit movies, the gaming recommendation, advertising, content creation. I’ve seen this with GoDaddy, when you have products and it’s uploaded, if you’re selling something online. And one of the hardest thing to do is to describe the product and give specifics using languages that will really encourage people. Well, that’s a job by itself. But there’s an AI that does that within the e-commerce of GoDaddy, and I’m sure that other platform are using it too. You upload the picture and we give a perfect description.

If you have inventory, you upload the picture and it will describe everything within the room for you. Book publishing with KPI you have a book design and layout editing appropriately. So all you need to do is write the book, and you can get help doing that anyway. If you can get AI that you can speak to, and it will transcribe what you’re thinking for you, so everybody can become an author. In other industry, we have them in politics to assist on public to interact with government in education, which is where we are for tools for student and educators. In medical field, patient oriented AI in terms of quotas that you have. You don’t need to be calling and getting information that you can have access to.

Clinical oriented AI to expedite results, and some of the tools being used to detect serious diseases like cancer. And administrative as well as operational oriented on AI, e-commerce, like I mentioned in Canva. You’re trying to prepare a video, you can use Canva to tell it what you want to do, and it will generate that video for you, or at least give you a picture of some of the things that you want to do.

And DALL·E is actually good with that. Legal field also is using AI in terms of research, just like you have the TaxGPT, you also have the legal on GPT that can help with legal cases. Just be careful that you’re citing the right information in terms of the people that you’re dealing with. So what we have to do for our students, with all of these things out there and so much of it out there, it’s extremely important that our students have technical competence to be able to face off others, to be able to survive within the job market. They have to have critical thinking. The creativity is extremely important in terms of what they have to be able to do, and they have to be adaptable. It cannot be like, “Oh, I’m too old to learn, or I don’t think I’m going to needing this.”

You better be prepared that you will be needing it, and so it is our job to help them understand that they have to be willing to learn new technologies, and adapt to the changing work environment, because we don’t know when anything can happen. And some of the ways we can do this is through our curriculum strategy or educational strategies, that curriculum enhancement. We have to be attentive to what’s going on in the world, and bring our student along. It cannot be the rote system or death by PowerPoint.

It has to be integrating AI in our topics just in almost any courses that you’re teaching. And Some experience it’s important for students to gain that and through interdisciplinary approach. Even though I teach accounting, some of my students, I’ve had a lot of student med school, law student, nursing student, why are they in accounting?

Because they want to learn about the business aspect of their business. After all, accounting is the language of business. So it’s not everyone who is going to school that’s looking to go and work for somebody. Some of them want to actually start their own business and run it. So they need to know how the money works. So it’s very important to encourage different departments taking courses so that they can learn from each other. And of course you to emphasize on the ethical consideration within AI, the bias and society impact. And industry partnership, that’s a must. It’s no longer, “Oh, go look for the internship program.” Educators have to be really involved in this process to make sure that the students are collaborating with industry, and that offers AI and focused on that. So that by the time they finish, they will not be left behind when it comes to trying to get jobs.

It’s always a great idea to bring guest lecturers on campus or to your classroom to do work or bring companies professionals in the field for workshops. I know that around this time, every single year there is a tax program where students are actually preparing taxes for the community for free, so that they can have experience. And with the usage of the tax software, they also get to use the one that supply AI in the process.

Industry project, so this is just beyond having companies come or even collaborating with the company, but actually having them to work for that company. And it’s more or less like a mentorship, and then build something in the process. So we do need to support our students in their development, because of the need for the professional and career counseling, the pathway where to go. Again, the critical thinking, technical skills, they have to be adaptable and be aware of the ethical dilemmas with AI, we are all aware of that.

One of the fears of course, the major fear and the debate beyond replacement is will AI steal my jobs? Well, first of all you have to have the job, and to have the job you have to have the skills. So we have to prepare them. AI is disruptive, but you still need people. And one thing that is funny that when I think about AI and consider that it’s been around for almost 70 years, is that we’re a bit selfish in the way that we complain about it. Because when we don’t need to dial 411 for information, I didn’t hear a lot of people complaining about, “Oh, this woman won’t have jobs anymore.” When we didn’t have to go to the gate. You have to hire gate man to watch your gate and open it for you when you come in, but now you have remote.

Nobody’s complaining about that. But now that is actually, “Hey, wait a minute. I’m in accounting and I’m seeing that the bookkeeping work is going because we have to do a little bit, because we have AI that does the job.” Oh, now it’s a problem. But that’s not the only reason. Of course that’s understandable. When something affects you, then it’s okay to be protective, but it is what it is. Will they steal jobs? Yes, some jobs will be stolen. Look at the supermarket. We don’t have cashiers anymore. And where you have cashiers, they’re very limited.

But it’s opening up field because you still need people to run this program and to make it successful. As wonderful as AI is to improve our lives, to improve how things work to improve the bottom life of companies, AI can do bad things. Misinformation is one of it. We’ve heard of several time, deep fake. We’ve had situations where you have presidential candidates taking pictures to make it look like that a certain group of people supporting them.

You’ve had people have been superimposed, pictures being superimposed and putting it in a position that they’re not in. You’ve seen cases of misinformation that can and have created war or escalates the situation because of the information placed out there and people are thinking, “Oh, this is really happening. Oh, go back in there and wipe them out.” Well, only to find out that that is really not the case.

But beyond the misinformation is the fact that something mimics human, some people are actually taking offense to that now. Because it’s one thing to have the cashiers self check out, but when you have entertainers being replaced or being mimicked, like Neyo said, he said, “How is it creative to mimic me?” He said he put in hard work to dance the way he does, to sing the way he does, and now you’re going to have AI do similar thing.

It’s like a wasted effort, a waste of his life. There’s no one that dances like Fred Astaire. You can try, but that’s him. Michael Jackson has his own distinct dancing style. Neyo does, Chris Brown does and Usher does. And for those who play basketball, they have their style, that’s why people come there to watch, not because you have some adults throwing balls in a bucket, it is because of the way that they entertain this format.

So when you have AI mimicking them they feel really, really threatened by that. So the question is when is it going to stop? We don’t know because a lot of people are looking into, especially with the super AI, that we are actually now competing with us as humans. So how do you know who is who? And so for that I’m going to bring you to this video to just entertain you about the traits of AI, and how some people see it. And after the video you can start your question. Excuse me. Sorry, excuse me please. I uploaded and oh gosh. Can you see it.

Heather Lund:

Sandra we are seeing your presentation right now. If it’s easier, I can drop a link of the video in the chat if you’d prefer.

Sandra Frempong:

Okay. Please do that.

Heather Lund:

Sure, no problem.

Sandra Frempong:

Okay. Is it there?

Heather Lund:

Yes, it’s been added in the chat.

Sandra Frempong:

Okay, so here’s the video. Let me see. Just let me know if you can see it.

Speaker 3:

[inaudible 00:35:02]. Good luck.

Heather Lund:

We’re hearing it. We’re not seeing it on the screen.

Sandra Frempong:

Can you see it?

Heather Lund:

No, we are not able to see it. We just hear it.

Speaker 3:

I assumed it wouldn’t do a proper job. Forgive my foolishness little friend.

Speaker 4:

Quiet, efficient. It will Never get tired.

Speaker 3:

Like a little mechanical immigrant.

Sandra Frempong:

Can you see it now?

Heather Lund:

No, we’re not able to see it. Now we are. Yes.

Speaker 4:

Who would never be stupid enough to waste money on something like this.

Heather Lund:

Oh, it just disappeared.

Sandra Frempong:

Oh gosh, sorry. Can you see it now?

Speaker 3:

[inaudible 00:35:55].

Heather Lund:

Yes.

Sandra Frempong:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

He gave it to DALL·E.

Speaker 5:

Why would DALL·E-

Speaker 3:

Good luck. It’s a dirty world out there. Don’t look back. Just go.

Speaker 4:

We should’ve gotten one of these years ago.

Speaker 3:

I assumed it wouldn’t do a proper job. Forgive my foolishness little friend.

Speaker 4:

Quiet, efficient. He’ll never get tired.

Speaker 3:

Like a little mechanical immigrant.

Speaker 5:

[foreign language 00:36:28] auntie, uncle. You bought one of these robot vacuum cleaners.

Speaker 4:

Who would ever be stupid enough to waste money on something like this.

Speaker 3:

It’s [inaudible 00:36:38], He gave it to DALL·E.

Speaker 5:

And why would DALL·E-

Speaker 4:

Go away. We’re busy cleaning this robot is very impressive.

Speaker 3:

Oh, and look at the path it leaves. You can tell where it has been and where the floor is still dirty.

Speaker 4:

I washed the floors yesterday.

Speaker 3:

The robot seems to disagree. Look, he’s off to check how well you clean the kitchen.

Speaker 4:

It’s like your mother has come to visit.

Speaker 3:

You are a curious little robot, curious for crumbs. What is wrong?

Speaker 4:

I’m old and useless.

Speaker 3:

You are not so useless. And we are both old. It’s wonderful. We get discounts everywhere.

Speaker 4:

I’m sorry. I’m not the woman married.

Speaker 3:

Nonsense. You are as beautiful as they are.

Speaker 4:

That is true but I cannot maintain the household the way I used to.

Speaker 3:

That’s why we had the robot.

Speaker 4:

How long until the robot replaces me in other parts of the house?

Speaker 3:

What other parts?

Speaker 4:

This bed.

Speaker 3:

Is that possible?

Speaker 4:

You see, you are curious.

Speaker 3:

No, no, no, no. You will never be replaced.

Speaker 4:

You’ll always be my little old [inaudible 00:38:06].

Speaker 3:

And you my big [foreign language 00:38:09].

Speaker 4:

Not in front of the robot.

Speaker 3:

Shoo, get out. I hate [inaudible 00:38:17] in the living room.

Sandra Frempong:

Okay.

Heather Lund:

Sandra, thank you. I love that video. We do have one question from Ibi. AI GPS can be connected to institutions, human devices and vehicle devices. One question is how GPS accommodations, how many GPS accommodations do we have or need? For example, it should be setting volume options, mute or unmute in different instances.

Sandra Frempong:

Well, that’s a very good question. It depends on needs because after all, we’re the one creating the need for some of this item. Like I said, when we didn’t have this, somehow we survived. So one may be enough, two may be enough, but it depends on the need of individuals. So it’s really hard to say how many do you have to have? What do you use them for, and why are you using them? That would be my response to that.

Heather Lund:

Yes, thank you. I think for me, going from apprehensive about AI, like most of us to having the same feelings like what you quoted from Tyler Perry, just being excited and seeing all of the possibilities or potential that we may not have been aware of. that mixed sense of feeling and maybe continuing to go back and forth between the two types of feelings as well. We do not have any other questions. If you do have a question, please feel free to add it in the chat. We do have just another minute left. If you have a question, please feel free to ask.

Sandra Frempong:

Oh, somebody is asking about plagiarism. How do you address that? That is a tough topic because plagiarism when we look at it, is no longer an issue for students. We also hearing issues about that with faculty. So how do you contend with that? You can cheat yourself out of graduating, but when you really get out there to do the work, eventually it’s going to catch up because you cannot fake it forever.

Things are going to be detected sooner or later. Yeah, that’s a very good question. Dr. Armstrong, because it’s been a lot of universities have had to contend with even refusing to graduate students, but in the long run they had to turn around and say, “You know what, let them go. There’s nothing we can do.”

And this is very common with doctoral students, but when we talk about plagiarism with AI, what about the situations where you actually have students paying people abroad to write their papers for them and then they submitting that is beyond plagiarism, because it’s willful and it’s a coordinated effort. So I really cannot say that I have a way to address that, because there are so many technologies that are in place for online teaching, where you can check on the content of the paper.

If you call it, depending on the professor and how far they’re willing to go, they can give the students zero. But how many are you able to catch and how many are you able to detect and actually punish? It’s also an issue of leadership. If you have a tough school and a tough leader within a school that will implement and enforce the punishment for plagiarism, then you can, you’ll be successful.

But if you have somebody who’s going to cave in when pressure mounts, then you’re not going to be able to address plagiarism in your school. Because if something goes wrong and the school won’t back you up, you’re on your own.