Keynote Presentation – Learning in an Age of AI

The surge in both AI capabilities and public adoption of AI innovations reveals important opportunities and concerns about the future of learning and education. AI has been shown to elevate human performance in a range of knowledge work, including coding, decision making, writing, and general creativity. Higher education’s first response to generative AI in early 2022 was to focus on preserving academic integrity in student work. As this angst receded, along with the overblown hype of AI overtaking humans, questions have turned to the sustained impact of AI on how we learn and live. AI performs at a human level, or better, in a growing range of cognitive tasks. What should universities teach and how should they teach it? This talk will provide a broad overview of AI’s progression, current state of performance, and future anticipated impacts on the higher education system. A particular focus will be on the need for new pedagogical models that emphasize human-AI interaction and engagement.

Facilitated by Dr. George Siemens