Appropriate reliance and responsible use
All interviewed experts agreed that the combination of generative AI and computer programming is already an unavoidable reality. You can’t stop using AI in your career, so the key is to make sure you learn how to use AI responsibly. Jason Ince, director of curriculum, training and product management at KinderLab Robotics, focuses on AI-assisted learning for young children. Ince emphasized, “AI must be included from the early education process.”
He continued, “Young children need to understand what AI is before they can use it. AI is lifeless, has no goals of its own, and is not always right. We must learn that AI is a tool created by human engineers. To prevent children from taking advantage of LLM, we need to help them understand what AI is and what its limitations are. “AI is a tool that helps people think and work better, but it is still important to first learn the basic cognitive skills that you want AI to help you with,” he added.
This is not just a lesson for kindergarteners. Daniel Supikis-Cheek, vice president of AI and analytics at Caseware and a master’s in accounting program at Rice University’s Jones School of Management, emphasizes that it is essential for students to understand AI within the tools and information environments in which they will operate. .
“It is not realistic for students to know every scenario or keep up with the rapid pace of change,” Supikis-Cheek said. Instead, it is important to understand tools like AI. It is a metacognitive concept that focuses on how to learn, how to understand, how to be skeptical of responses, and how to follow up so that they are appropriately trustworthy. “These are the skills I teach in school.”
The goal of this class is to teach the process followed by actual accounting experts. The process may include AI. Supikis Cheek said, “The process of arriving at the correct answer is more important than the correct answer itself. “It is necessary to ensure that courses that can be used in the actual field are utilized in a university environment,” he said. The course also introduces you to the rigorous world of corporate finance and teaches you when certain processes and techniques are acceptable. Supikis-Cheek said, “Lectures are a safe space where it’s okay to make mistakes, which helps you be better prepared when you go out into the real world. “The worst outcome in a course is getting a bad grade, but in reality it can lead to poor audit reports, fines, lawsuits and a decline in public trust,” he added.
Ask the right questions
For many educators, AI is not simply something that needs to be accommodated in the curriculum. Educators must design their curriculum to teach students how to use AI effectively. Ultimately, as Brockie’s Lucipenko puts it, “To get the most out of AI, you need to know what questions to ask and how to apply the answers.”
“We need new forms of training with AI tools in mind,” said Risto Miikulainen, vice president of evolutionary AI at Cognizant AI Labs and professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin. These challenges may be larger than they are today. “Students are responsible for the overall design, and detailed sub-implementation can be done through AI tools,” he said. This includes tasks that are tedious today but can be greatly helped by AI tools, such as upgrading, debugging and modifying software, and designing, upgrading and maintaining software to enable effective use of AI in the future.
Professor Greg Benson of the University of San Francisco also holds this view. “When I teach an advanced OS course next semester, I plan to design the class so that students can fully utilize the coding assistant for their projects,” Benson said. “We will present more complex tasks than existing projects, and teach students not only how to use the assistant to develop solutions, but also how to learn OS concepts and code more deeply,” he explained.
AI is also for educators
Generative AI can also help educators. CoderAI’s Morales noted that generative AI is useful for answering simple questions that might otherwise eat up class time. “Experienced software engineers, including professors, don’t have time to help beginner coders when they forget to indent their Python code or run into problems,” Morales said. At this time, generative AI acts as a game changer. “New coders can simply share their code with AI and the AI will suggest code, allowing them to continue their learning journey without waiting,” he explained.
As Gentech’s Wilson says, students aren’t the only ones who need quick answers. “For teachers, AI provides the ability to quickly find answers or alternative perspectives to ambiguous questions asked by students,” he said. In other words, along the learning journey, teachers and students will explore together how new tools like generative AI work well and what their limitations are.
dl-itworldkorea@foundryco.com
Source: www.itworld.co.kr
