Forbes article by Jeff Flam
Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of ASU Thrive magazine.
Winds of change are blowing through academia, and at the heart of this transformation lies a powerful force: artificial intelligence (AI).
Universities, once proud of their long traditions, are now at the forefront of adopting innovative AI technologies to enhance learning, personalize the educational experience, and equip students with the skills they need to succeed in a rapidly evolving job market.
How will AI reshape academia to prepare students to succeed in the technological environment of the future?
AI will have four main impacts on today’s Gen Z students:
AI is poised to fundamentally change how academia and universities help students succeed. Ethical considerations such as intellectual property protection and data privacy are at the forefront of today’s business conversations. Universities play a critical role in preparing students for an AI-driven workforce. In a world where students may have multiple jobs and careers, continuous learning and adaptability are essential skills.
To better understand how leading higher education institutions are adapting to AI and incorporating it into preparing students for their next opportunities, I reached out to two thought leaders: Lev Gonick, chief information officer at Arizona State University, and Chris Johnson, a Phoenix-based applied AI expert and CEO of LT.
Innovating support for Gen Z students and university operations
As we watch AI fundamentally change how universities support students, help them succeed, and enhance academic research and business operations, it becomes increasingly clear why effective technology support is so necessary.
“At ASU, our core business is student success,” said ASU CIO Gonick. “We think of the work we’re doing at ASU as an enterprise-wide effort, starting with using generative AI and then leveraging many other AI techniques to help students succeed. This is the foundation of our work.”
By the numbers
Arizona State University has received more than 375 AI proposals to improve student learning and streamline research and operations.
200 people have been activated so far
To learn more about AI at ASU, visit ai.asu.edu
Rather than dictating how AI can be most effectively used in learning and research environments, ASU expects faculty and staff to take the lead in their own areas of innovation to make a bigger impact.
To kick off its recently announced collaboration with OpenAI, ASU issued an innovation challenge for faculty and staff users to submit proposals on how they can best use ChatGPT Enterprise to enhance student success, open new avenues for research, and streamline organizational processes that support student outcomes. According to Gonick, more than 150 proposals were submitted in the first round, with the most notable use cases relating to the use of AI for operational efficiency and staff training, improving learning design capabilities, academic paper writing assistance, and AI-assisted behavioral health applications.
Gonick noted that human oversight will be more important than ever to ensure that AI serves as a tool that augments human potential rather than replacing it.
“While AI is a disruptive and potentially transformative technology, we’re also very focused on the humans in the middle of it,” he said. “Whether that’s professors and academics or professional staff, we want to maintain our focus and attention on student success.”
Preparing today’s Gen Z students for the workforce of tomorrow
It is becoming increasingly clear that the fields of AI and higher education are increasingly intertwined, primarily because many jobs in the future are likely to be influenced by AI to a greater or lesser extent.
Rather than teaching students specific technologies, it will be even more important to teach them how to learn using AI as an accelerator.
“Many universities are very cautious about their AI efforts in part because they don’t understand it,” Chris Johnson added. “But when it comes to teaching skills, now is not the time to be cautious. We want to educate students so they are best prepared when they enter the workforce and have the best capabilities to compete in the marketplace.”
Maximizing the impact of innovation through security
Gonick noted key concerns around protecting the university’s intellectual property, ensuring data privacy and implementing strong security measures. He also highlighted the importance of collaboration between universities and companies, citing ASU’s collaboration with OpenAI as an example, which ensured ASU’s data and intellectual property were protected.
“What we know is that it’s really important, especially for universities and large organizations, to understand that their intellectual property is probably one of their primary currencies,” Gonick emphasized. “Obviously, the privacy of employees, or in our case employees and students, is paramount, alongside making sure that security measures are as robust as possible.”
ASU’s goal with the aforementioned ChatGPT Enterprise Innovation Challenge is to leverage the university’s knowledge core — the faculty, researchers and staff that set ASU apart from other organizations and institutions — to be at the forefront of discovery and implementation while providing ongoing support for use cases. ASU faculty and staff will lead the innovation, and ASU Enterprise Technology, the university’s central IT organization led by Gonick, will support the secure environment necessary to ensure data privacy.
While we see AI as a highly disruptive and potentially transformative technology, we are also very focused on the human in between.
Lev GonickCIO, Enterprise Technology
Pursuing continuous learning
As AI systems evolve, the need for continuous learning will be crucial, including integrating AI awareness into course curricula and promoting academic integrity practices that acknowledge the role of AI in research and learning.
“It’s great that ASU has access to all these tools, but faculty need to work harder on how to actually use these tools in their own fields,” Johnson said. “If they don’t understand good prompting techniques, how to avoid bias, and how to get the most out of the tools, they’re not going to be able to incorporate generative AI into their instructional plans in a way that’s helpful to students right now.”
As the convergence of AI and academia continues, it is essential that we maintain a strong focus on collaborative engagement, ethical stewardship, and human-centered values. Striking a balance between innovation and ethics is key to ensuring universities are poised to harness AI to advance and transform human potential.
Jeff Flam has been featured in Forbes since 2014. He consults around the world and is the co-author of five books, including “Marketing to Gen Z” (HarperCollins). © 2024 Forbes. All rights reserved. Used under license.