Lumen Spring Summer 2023 - Flipbook - Page 15
AI and the University
By Jennie Shaw
The University of Adelaide’s priorities are
to encourage and support excellent research
and teaching and to create transformative
learning experiences.
So, our response to recent innovations in
generative artificial intelligence (AI) has
been to ensure that our staff and students
learn to use AI productively, ethically, and
responsibly.
For our staff and our graduates, an ability
to use AI well, and for good, will be an
important skill set for professional life.
We believe generative AI will transform
teaching and learning. While discipline
knowledge, expertise and experience will
always be necessary and fundamental,
teachers can now unlock the power of AI
to realise some of their most ambitious and
exciting learning ideas.
At the beginning of the year, we asked our
academic staff to check that their planned
assessments were not vulnerable to academic
integrity breaches through use of generative
AI. We provided assistance so that colleagues
could effectively redesign and, in some
instances, replace their assessment tasks.
Partly in response to that urgent task, the
University of Adelaide’s Artificial Intelligence
Community of Practice was formed. The
Community of Practice meets regularly and
brings together more than 100 members to
share best practice, ideas, and plans.
Already, our students and educators are
experimenting with AI in their courses.
For example, in semester 1, 2023:
• Dr Eleanor Parker and Dr Dandara Haag
asked fifth year dental students to draw
on critical thinking, analytical skills, and
scientific evidence to critique ChatGPT’s
response to a complex scenario relating to
population health;
• Dr Cheryl Pope’s computer science
students compared their data structure
designs to those generated by ChatGPT
and evaluated the accuracy, precision,
and limitations of the generative
AI’s answers.
Of course, we expect our students to use
AI ethically, and to be able to evaluate AI to
understand its appropriateness, limitations
and where it can support or enhance
learning.
We also expect students to use generative AI
consistently with our robust University-wide
academic integrity policy. Increased effort
has been focused in recent years on ensuring
students complete required academic
integrity modules (these are mandatory
for all commencing and transferring
students) and understand what practices
are acceptable and what are not.
The University has also put together a
range of resources including videos, dos
and don’ts, and referencing guides to help
students and staff understand what we
expect of them with respect to their use of
generative AI.
The University’s response to generative
AI and its possibilities will continue to be
ethical and future focused.
The generative AI landscape is evolving
rapidly, but of course this isn’t the first
time that schools and universities have
experienced a technological revolution;
the introduction of scientific calculators
and internet search engines, for example,
presented challenges for education; but
today the proper use of these technologies is
something educators teach, and employers
expect. In the case of generative AI, the
rapid rate of development means that, as
teachers and researchers, we are learning
about its potential and limitations at the
same time as our students.
For the time being, our researchers in AIML
and many of our academic and professional
staff in the University are at the forefront
of these changes and are in demand in the
sector as educators and commentators.
These are exciting times!
Professor Jennie Shaw is the University’s
Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President
(Academic) in the Division of Academic and
Student Engagement.
I definitely won’t kill you (probably)
Setting himself a target of writing 10,000
songs in 10,000 days, alum Andrew
Gardner hoped to challenge himself and
hone his already significant musical skills.
reassuring me it wasn’t going to harm the
humans,” he says. “It reassured me so many
times, it became a bit creepy. And that’s the
basis for this song.”
Now, nearing 6,000 songs completed, he
is always on the hunt for new material and
fresh ways to entertain his own mind.
The song was written by Andrew as a
“collage” of 20 or so songs written by AI,
and is illustrated with a video he created,
also using various AI tools.
Lately, the subject of artificial
intelligence and its uses has intrigued,
and worried, him.
So, naturally, he wrote a song about it.
More than one in fact.
Andrew Gardner graduated from the
University of Adelaide in 1992 with a
BA in politics and philosophy.
This one, featured at the QR code to the
right, has a delightful avatar reassuring us
we are safe, and there is nothing to fear.
“It started with a conversation between
me and AI where it spent a lot of time
LUMEN – SPRING/SUMMER 2023 15
