AI in Education Series - Introduction

When I think about "AI" in today's world, I remember a clip from the British 90's show Brass Eye that went viral on Vine ten or so years ago. The clip shows a man holding up a large technology sign, while yelling "Technology!", and the woman jumps and says "Oh my god". A voiceover narrates, "So is it any wonder people are afraid of technology?" I remember thinking it was the funniest thing, and showing it to my friends and sisters, expecting them to find it as amusing as I did. They didn't. Good times.

While this clip was created thirty years ago as part of a comedy sketch, it's remarkably relevant in this era of rapidly developing artificial intelligence. How often does a mention of AI feel like a bit of a jumpscare? Cause feelings of uncertainty, surprise, and even fear? It is an incredibly vast and complex topic, and it's everywhere.

Perhaps one of the brightest spotlights is directed towards AI use in education. Students and educators alike have been sent scrambling, trying to figure out what place this new technology has in academia. A Brown professor reversed his virtual exam policies due to concerns of cheating with AI. Students purposely put errors in their written assignments to avoid being flagged by AI detectors. I think it's safe to say we haven't reached a group consensus yet.

My name is Tara, and I am a rising senior at Penn State University studying meteorology and computational science. I've witnessed firsthand the rise of AI and technology use in education. I've watched my peers go from making fun of the Snapchat AI to considering chatbots as a viable tool for most, if not all, assignments. I spend a lot of time thinking about my future career and how this new technology will affect it.

I understand that for educators, AI is confusing. It's easier to ban it, ignore it, pretend it doesn't exist. Like it or not though, it is the future for many fields. The National Science Foundation has declared Artificial Intelligence to be one of its major initiatives and invests over 700 million dollars in it yearly. More and more companies are adopting AI as part of their daily operations.

Another point to consider is the reason students attend universities. While there are a wide range of motivations for attending university, many students are trying to prepare for a future career. If AI is going to be relevant in a student's career, they deserve to be educated on it. It is a professor's responsibility to prepare their students for the developments occurring in their field, regardless if it includes AI or not. The problem is, whose responsibility is it to prepare professors for this technology that is rapidly altering their own job?

When I accepted my internship with Unidata, I knew I wanted to focus on topics of AI education, sustainability, and ethics. With guidance from the amazing staff, I landed on a project: a series of articles directed towards the Earth Systems science education community. I hope to use my lens as a current student to answer the questions you have about AI, offer a look into the many perspectives on it you may encounter, and provide suggestions on how it could be used in the educational environment.

One more thought I wish to emphasize: this topic is incredibly nuanced. There is no 100% correct method to approach it, and it is impossible to provide you with everything there is to know. What I can do is give you tools to develop informed opinions and policies on this technology and to feel more confident and comfortable with how it is used in your educational space. If these articles convince you to learn more about AI and think more critically about how to use it, then I will have achieved my goal.

Thank you for reading, and feel free to reach out with thoughts, comments, and questions to tstaresinic@ucar.edu. Stay tuned for the next article, What is AI?