AI on the Mind

Good. Bad.

Being raised in a community like Berrien Springs, ideas like “good” and “bad” always felt so straightforward to me. My rule was always: if it looks messy and complicated, stay away.

While one could wax eloquent on such an arrangement’s complex implications, curses, and blessings, I will not. I will, however, express that one crucial aspect of my upbringing was the clear, unflinching distinction between right and wrong, good and bad. So, like a good listener, I learned what was right and wrong, good and bad. Praying was right, profanity was wrong; honesty was good, and cheating was bad.

It may seem simple enough, but how does this work in practice? What counts as cheating?

Young me, following the tried and true of “looks messy, must be bad,” decided cheating meant looking at my friend’s answers on tests. As it should be. But it also meant not using online homework helps, like Slader, or using the internet to check my answers on assignments. The internet was a scary, foggy, complicated place that was better left to Club Penguin and reruns of Phineas and Ferb.

But now, Club Penguin just isn’t what it used to be, and it’s been years since I’ve heard a student talk about Slader. What happens when the world changes and you aren’t ready?

Many of our Andrews University faculty and staff have decided they want to be ready. Technology has rapidly advanced, and we have passed the days of Slader, Chegg, and Clippy. We have entered the age of artificial intelligence on an unprecedented scale. Now, we have GPTs (Generative Pre-Trained Transformers) from Gemini to ChatGPT that can generate human-like text and conversations. These GPTs, particularly ChatGPT, were the subjects of discussion and learning at a Zoom course taught through the university early this semester, on Tuesday, January 16 at 4 p.m.

Out of curiosity, I joined this “Digital Learning & Instructional Technology” course hosted by The Center for Digital Learning and Instructional Technology (DLiT) at Andrews University. A lesson in a short series on the uses and implications of AI, I sat in on a workshop surrounding “Digital Teaching Trends” and, more specifically, “Conversations with ChatGPT: Regenerating Responses.” Dr. Janine Lim, Stephanie Wilczynski, and Dr. Sheralee Thomas - the lead trainer of the group - all had a role in instructing a robust group of dozens of faculty, staff, and others who came to this short course.

Following a prayer, committing all learning to God, the instruction commenced. The content found in the meeting wasn’t just applicable to teachers but was incredibly helpful to me as a student. I fervidly scribbled my notes down as the meeting progressed and discovered gems like the value of “being human” within my interactions with AI, along with the six strategies of Open AI. A significant focus of the meeting was the value and understanding of prompt engineering to get the responses you need and want from your GPT of choice. Giving your AI tool the most specific information you can and conversing back and forth with it can lead to more advantageous results than a simple “search,” like what one might enter into a browser like Google.

Beyond the tips and tricks of AI, as practiced overall, there was an emphasis on how we can use it in instruction, tutoring, and assisting students. On this note, all attendees were split into breakout rooms to discuss and practice AI/ prompt strategies and how we could use these strategies in our various roles, especially as teachers. 

I was whisked away to a breakout room and was immediately greeted with the excitement of professionals working through a challenge together. My room included Professor Kimberly Pichot, Dean of the College of Professions, Antonio Miranda, Assistant Professor, and Sully Reed, Film and Television Editor.

In this breakout room, I sat in awe, watching faces in various digital boxes swap stories and advice from their time using AI. One fun anecdote came from Dean Pichot, who shared a story about a time she went searching for a topical Bible verse for an event and found the perfect one by simply searching through ChatGPT! However, as the story progressed, it became clearer that this perfectly suited, “very nice Bible verse” was not, indeed, from Scripture. The AI chat box simply made it up! Instead of pushing the influence of AI away, Pichot expressed that she learned to critically evaluate what information she would accept from AI and how she structured her prompt engineering. This virtue was echoed by Reed, who stated, “I don’t trust just one single [GPT]” for information and help. He uses the work of AIs and checks it, being able to create his own text from his interactions with the GPT.

Before concluding my time in the breakout room, I was sure to ask the group whether they thought ChatGPT AI assistance was good for students to know about and use. Before I could finish vocalizing my question, all members of the breakout room had their thumbs up in enthusiastic approval. Pichot mentioned that even as it can be tricky to manage, learning about AI can be a matter of survival in some departments and fields where students will have to compete with an AI-bolstered workforce. This concluding idea was well-summarized by Miranda, saying: “I embrace using AI with students. We’re entering a new era of information technology, and it’s my responsibility as a professor to prepare students to be competitive in the labor force. I train students to be smarter than AI, but also to allow AI to be [their] best friend.”

As the virtual program concluded, I was faced with the reality that this tool, which had made me so nervous, was being used and enthusiastically supported by professionals at my Adventist university. The “intelligence” of AI is foggy, messy, and complicated in myriad ways. But maybe, just maybe, it’s better not to stay away. Maybe it isn’t “cheating” to get assistance from a cited, yet nebulous, source. With this in mind, I opened my nearest device, started a ChatGPT account, and ventured into the mysterious unknown. All the while thinking that maybe learning to sit with the discomfort of uncertainty while maintaining one’s sense of integrity is what is, truly, good.