Georgia Sen. John Albers (left) speaks with Sen. Brad Thomas after a legislative study committee meeting on Artificial Intelligence meeting July 17 at Georgia Tech. Kate Verity/Georgia Recorder
Artificial Intelligence is another technological advancement like calculators once were, and educators should help students learn to use it constructively rather than resist allowing them to use it in their coursework, said the chair of a Georgia Senate study committee considering how to respond to the emerging software.
Through three speakers Tuesday from three Georgia universities at the second meeting of the Georgia Senate Study Committee on Artificial Intelligence, the consensus appeared that, like technology advances that came before, education must adapt to AI rather than try and force students away from it. Sen. John Albers, a Roswell Republican who leads the panel, recalled that he had to solve math problems by hand in elementary school without a calculator. Today calculators are as ubiquitous as smart phones, showing how mathematics education was not stunted by adapting to new technology. Similarly, this committee is working to pave the way for AI to be integrated into educational practices.
“You can do two things: you can forbid the students to use these tools, or you can let them use them and you can change the way we teach,” Pascal Van Hentenryck, Georgia Tech professor, the school’s AI Hub director and appointee to the study committee.
Nicholas Creel, associate professor of business law at Georgia College & State University, brought different educational practices for introducing AI to all curriculums to the committee’s attention. As a professor at the state’s designated public liberal arts university, Creel says he advocates for incorporating AI education into all departments in some fashion.
“That’s what I would say we need to make sure we’re pushing in this new world. Not just STEM, and that’s a big part of what liberal arts does. We produce generalists,” Creel said. “When we look at what a lot of AI employees are asking for, the CEO of Gamma was speaking out about how he wants generalists – the idea is that specialists create latency.”
The state’s educators need to focus on aspects of the classroom that cannot be replaced by AI. He suggested things like soft skills, dialogue and face to face interaction as things that AI cannot easily replace, whereas a 300-student lecture hall could be taught by AI rather than a human.
The focus was largely on higher education, but Albers emphasized in closing remarks the importance of bringing greater consideration to Georgia’s technical colleges as well as K-12 education in future meetings.
Georgia lawmakers debated criminalizing the use of AI in deceptive political ads during this year’s legislative session, but the legislation stalled before they adjourned.
Albers and the committee will continue to meet and study AI with a three-pronged approach that aims to ask questions about regulation and ethics, privacy and data protection, and social welfare and equity across topics listed in the AI Study Committee Framework: labor and workforce, research and development, public safety, health care, transportation infrastructure and economic impact innovation.
Meanwhile, across the street the state House is in the final stages of forming its own AI subcommittee under the Technology and Infrastructure Innovation committee, chaired by Rep. Brad Thomas, a Holly Springs Republican who was present at Tuesday’s Senate study meeting. Though the House and Senate operate separately, Thomas said that he and Albers are already planning to work together and hope to have some joint hearings in the future.
“I think John and I have communicated very early, actually even in session, that we have intent to really try and work together to hammer the policy out. I think it’s probably going to be a lot more interwoven than what you typically would see,” Thomas said.
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