Oberlin's foray into Artificial Intelligence Investigations
Oberlin College is set to embark on an exciting journey with the launch of its "Year of AI Exploration" initiative. This initiative aims to delve into the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on all aspects of the campus.
As part of this exploration, Adam Eck, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Data Science, and Joe Lubben, Professor of Music Theory, will serve as the college's Directors for AI Innovation and Strategy. Eck will lead the college, while Lubben will oversee the conservatory.
Workshops designed to meet the broad needs of the community will be collaboratively offered, in deep consultation with Eck, Lubben, and other key faculty. These workshops will provide opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to explore AI, with a focus on understanding its potential value and challenges.
To facilitate this exploration, Oberlin College will provide all faculty and staff with access to the enterprise version of ChaptGPT and Google Gemini this fall. Access for students will be granted in the spring. These tools have been chosen to address considerations such as stronger safeguards for Oberlin's data, better support for research and academic pursuits, creating equity across campus, and creating a common tool for collective exploration of AI.
The Year of AI Exploration at Oberlin will involve various activities such as speakers, workshops, and hands-on opportunities for faculty, staff, and students. A shared internal hub and a public site have been created to capture the community's collective learning, pilots, and experiments, supporting policy development over time and building AI communities of practice.
Opportunities to pilot various AI tools will be provided, with a planned and thoughtful approach to assessing their value and challenges. The goal is to prepare the faculty, students, and staff to be discerning users of AI, even as it reshapes education, research, and employment.
For those who have had little to no exposure to AI, guided exploration opportunities will be provided in four-week segments. The initiative aims to create a space for critical and creative thinking about AI's impact on students and how to best prepare them for the future.
Key faculty committees will be taking up the work of policy review and curricular development as they grapple with AI's impact on academia. The goals of the Year of AI Exploration at Oberlin include institutional exploration, grappling with concerns, establishing policy and procedures, gathering perspectives, exploring curricular and co-curricular pathways, and investigating administrative units through the lens of AI innovation.
A series of lectures and conversations by experts in the field will be brought to campus to inform policy guidance and provide the campus with a framework to discuss the challenges and opportunities that AI provides. A faculty survey and a separate student survey will launch in early September to assess perspectives on AI and its usage.
The smartphone has significantly reshaped human life, and artificial intelligence is an emerging technology that may come close to or surpass its impact. By launching the "Year of AI Exploration," Oberlin College is taking a proactive approach to understanding and navigating this transformative technology.
