Empowering Students and Faculty with Generative AI: An Interview with Dr. Rob Crossler

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Welcome to AI Goes to College, the podcast that helps higher education

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professionals navigate the changes brought on by generative AI.

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I'm your host, doctor Craig Van Slyke.

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The podcast is a companion to the AI Goes to College newsletter.

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You can sign up for the newsletter at ai goes to college.com/

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newsletter. Today, we've got a very special edition of AI Goes

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to College. Rob Crossler from Washington State University

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is joining me in our very first interview. Rob

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is an associate professor of information systems at the Carson College of

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Business at Washington State University, and I think he's soon to be

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professor. He serves as chair of the Department of Management

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Information Systems and Entrepreneurship and holds the Philip

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a Kaye's distinguished professorship in management

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information systems. Rob has served as the

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president of the AIS Special Interest Group on Information Security and

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Privacy, and he's done a lot of other stuff. He's won

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research awards. He's been funded by the NSF and the Department

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of Defense. His research has appeared in top journals like

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MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and the list

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goes on and on and on. But, anyway, I'm really happy that Rob was able

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to join me for this wide ranging and quite

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interesting conversation about how generative AI is

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shaping higher education. Rob, thanks for being

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the very first guest on AI Goes TO College. Great.

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I'm glad I could be here, and I I look forward to this conversation. Yep.

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That's what you say now. We'll see what you say at the end. Well, it's

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up to up to the questions you asked me, Greg. I guess. That's right. That's

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right. So I wanna start off with, how do you

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use AI? And here, we're talking specifically about

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generative AI. So if I say AI, I mean generative AI.

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Perfect. I use generative AI in in a couple of different ways. As

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a professor, in the classroom, I will use it to

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actually help me to write questions for students to

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take my general ideas that I think will make a really good question, and I

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feed it in through prompts. And it does a much quicker job, much more

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efficient job of of getting to the point where I've got material to use in

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the classroom. I also encourage students. It's like,

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okay, let's open up generative AI and see how it can help us with our

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assignments. So I'll I very easily

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feel comfortable saying, you know, this is a new technology. We're information

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systems students. Let's leverage it. And then they start asking the the questions of,

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well, how can we use it responsibly? How can we not be accused of cheating?

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That's usually what they're concerned about. How is this not cheating? And and my

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answer to that has always been transparency. The more you bring

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in recognition that you're using it, how and why, in my eyes, that's

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not much different than I use Google to help me figure out something that I

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baked into an answer on something. Interestingly, I had a student in my

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office, this last week that was working on their resume,

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and they didn't have a lot of experience. Right? So their their only job they've

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had was delivering sandwiches for a sandwich delivery company.

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And when they were describing kind of what that was, it said I

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delivered sandwiches to people's house. I made sure they were on time and then they

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were you know, they stayed fresh while I delivered. Them. Very generic things that had

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nothing to do with an information systems student seeking

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an information systems job. And so I I said, well, let's

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ask chat gpt how to make

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experience as a sandwich delivery driver sound appealing

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for an information system student seeking an information systems job.

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And and it changed some of the words for the student to

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utilize GPS to ensure a 15%

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increase in delivery time efficiency. Right?

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Saying kind of the same thing about how they're delivering sandwiches, but bringing

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technology into that equation and giving a student who is struggling with how

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do I capture information systems in this in in a way that that

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worked. Right? And and so assuring the student with how to

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utilize this tool to help them say more creative things, I saw

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more creative product from them, which helped them to get past the stumbling block

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of of I don't know how to be creative with something like that. That's

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great. So how has it worked out to have students open

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up their AI tool of choice in the classroom to dig into

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something? Because I'm teaching the junior level principles of

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information systems class in the spring yet again.

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And I've toyed with the idea of really minimizing

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some of the lecturing and just say, okay. What we're gonna do, you're

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gonna go out and and let's say we're talking about what is an information

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system. Plug it into chat, gpt, PO, Gemini,

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whatever you use, see what it comes up with. Now let's

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see what AI comes up with, and let's compare that to

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what's in the book or see where, you know, maybe

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that's not the best answer or that's pretty solid. Mhmm. But I'm

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I'm not sure how that would work, but it sounds like you're doing something

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similar to that. A little bit. So so the class I teach is a

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junior level. I've got juniors and seniors in a a cybersecurity class.

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And what I found as I

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I've done similar sorts of things with students. Some are afraid to

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use it. Others embrace using it and and just, like, how creative can I

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get? And so what I do and

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what I've encouraged others to do is to try it,

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to experiment, and to be okay with failure. Because from

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failure, we learn. And the the the caveat I give in

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being accepting of failure is to also take the approach of do

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no harm. So just because we're experimenting with this new

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technology and how we go about utilizing it, I don't think the

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students should get a lower grade because I decided to do

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something creative and experimental. So with the mindset of the student will not

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be harmed by this, let's get creative. Let's see how the learning

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happens. And in a lot of ways, where I think the learning happens is, you

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know, in the student's mind, it happens because they used a new tool. They learned

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how to use a new tool. I actually think the learning happens in

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the reflection, which is what did I learn from this? How did this

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help me advance? And then how could I do something similar

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in the future of my own will in the court? Yeah. Yeah. I I

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tried a little experiment this quarter where I gave a

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question that I've used every time I teach this class. It's

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really simple. It's compare and contrast customer relationship

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management systems and supply chain management systems. And

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I got to thinking, they're gonna use generative AI for this.

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And so what I did is I put that into generative AI, put it into

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I think I use chat GPT, got the answer,

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Said in the assignment, said, okay. Here's the question. I put it

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into chat GPT. Here's the answer. Now what I want

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you to do is compare that to what's in the book.

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How are the two answers similar? How are the two answers different?

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What we talked about in the book and what chat gpt came up

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with was pretty similar, but here are a couple of things in the chat

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gpt answer. I'm not so sure we're right.

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And then it brought up some things that we didn't bring up. So I think

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it was a good exercise for them. The responses fell into 2

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categories, students that actually did what I asked them to do

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and students who just answered the original question and had no clue what I was

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really trying to get at. Mhmm. So but I think there's a

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larger point here, and I want to see what you think of this. I think

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it's a mistake to pretend that the tool doesn't exist and to pretend that they're

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not going to use it By doing things like what,

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Rob, you're talking about and what I'm talking about, we teach

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them to your earlier point kind of about the tool

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and and how it can be used. But we also teach

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them to be critical users of the tool.

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Because as anybody who's used any of these tools knows,

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it'll make stuff up. And so they can't just take

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and say, okay. This is right because ChatGPT said so. So what what do you

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think? Are you are you in agreement with that? Or Absolutely agreement. As I think

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back about, you know, my my career so far in academia, critical thinking has

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always been one of the things that industry has said

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our students need to be better at. Right? I I don't know how you perfectly

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enable students to be critical thinkers, but I think generative AI gives a great

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place to come up with activities that focus on,

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okay, we're using the tools, but then, well, how does the critical thinking

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occur? How do we how are we confident that we have correct

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information in what we use? And and so I was talking with someone on the

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the board of advisers, for us at at WSU

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who shared that he thinks our students are in a unique position as they

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enter the marketplace to where people in industry

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are gonna be looking to the students coming out of college right now about how

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to use generative AI because they fully expect that in all the free

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time that I put air quotes around free time. All the free time students

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have is they're they're playing with these technologies and they're figuring out how to use

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them in in ways that industry is not yet. And so I think preparing

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students, a, to feel confident that they can enter into a field and bring

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something to the conversation is is important for us as academics to

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be able to do, but also how am I critical of that thinking or critically

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thinking about the that information I'm getting. And and the example I like to give

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my students when we talk about this is let's assume that

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you created a document and you gave it to your boss because he

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gave you an assignment to go out and do things. And

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your boss is gonna use that to go and, you know, pitch to clients

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to do something that's gonna put your boss in the hot seat. You wanna

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know that what you're giving your boss is good and and

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reliable. And if not, it's gonna come back and bite you. If you're

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using generative AI to come up with that, how are you

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confident in what you're giving your boss that it's not going to

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embarrass him in front of a client that's potentially gonna write a check

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for many 1,000,000 of dollars for something your organization is building

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up. But it's no different than doing a Google search. Right? You're gonna go out

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and do Google search and you're gonna make an assessment of, you know, that's somebody's

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blog that I don't know what makes them an expert on that topic

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versus that's a a white paper from a leading

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industry consulting firm that that has the legitimacy to be able to

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say something. And and how do you then discern that in a in a generative

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AI world? And and then that opens the door for a lot of really interesting

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conversations with students about how do they know that they believe what it

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is that they're getting out of these products. Yeah. That absolutely. And that

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that's so important for them because I think

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they use technology so much and they have for so much of their lives

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that they just uncritically accept

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what Google or, you know, whatever returns. I mean, it's just

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that that must be right. And

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AI is so confident in its bad

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answers. I mean, it's really kind of impressive. I wish I could be that

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confident even on my right answers, but it's just, you know,

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yep. The, you know, the declaration of

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independence was signed on July 4,

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1982, you know, or whatever. And it just this is the

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fact. They really do need to understand that they have to

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be critical consumers. I use the parallel of Wikipedia.

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So my wife, Tracy, and I are watching some movie, and we're trying to, like,

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you know, who else was the was or what else was this

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person in? I pull up their Wikipedia page.

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Well, who who cares if that's right? It puts in a movie

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that they weren't really in or it misses a television show they were

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in. Who cares? But if you're gonna embarrass your

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boss and get your rear end fired, you know,

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you better not be using Wikipedia, and you better not be

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uncritically using generative AI. So that brings me

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to another question, and this is something that came up

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recently in a in a couple of different conversations I was

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having. Some people seem to think that students are all using this

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like crazy. My experience has been

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that relatively few of them are actually using

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it at all, and just a subset of

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that group is using it very much. So we, you

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know, we we I'm using the big Mhmm.

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Broad royal we not royal we, but I'm using the big broad

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we, seem to think that students are all over the latest technology,

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and so they're all over this. But I don't think that's true. I don't think

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many students are using it. So what what's your take? That that's

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generally what I see. The the and and

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the way I I come to that conclusion is the conversations I have with

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students when we start using it is

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almost a fear to use it at least in the academic space because there

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has been so much fear built into them that it

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is cheating. And so those who have used

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it have done, you know, stupid party games where it's like, write a story

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about an adventure I went on or, you know, write this poem in

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Limerick format or or something that is just them

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playing with it, using it purposefully as as something that's helping

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them with their coursework or or what they're doing academically. There's a lot of

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fear in students' minds about what's gonna get them right up the flagpole

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for, an integrity violation. So, yeah, I see a lot of

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students that that's their first biggest question is they're like, what? You mean I I

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can use this in your class and and this is allowed? Because

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I've been told with so many channels that it's not. One one of my

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colleagues, Tom Stafford, recently taught a class, and he

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required them to use it. I want you to use generative

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AI for whatever. I don't remember exactly what he was having them do,

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and then refine that. Mhmm. Use that to help you create your

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final product, which I I thought was a really good way to do it.

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Yep. That was the final exam I gave last semester. It was I I

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basically told them, choose any of the topics that we've talked about this

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semester and create a document related to that particular

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topic, your choice, but utilize generative

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AI to do this and give it at least,

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you know, 3 iterations of prompts. Share with me, a,

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what you created, and, b, what were your prompts? What was the

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output for each of your prompts? And then what was your reflection on what

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you received from each of those prompts and and, you know, how you

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critically assessed it. And, really, the the grading of that was on

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their ability to build more critical prompting.

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Right? Playing with that prompting to get it to get some get them to what

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they want, but also to demonstrate that

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they validated in some way, shape, or form the information that they

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got. And I used generative AI to write the question. I'd let students

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know that. I was completely transparent. And I was afraid I was gonna

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have all the students receive a 100% on the on that assignment.

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And I had variance in grades. They created the rubric for me. It is

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so good at creating rubrics that I will never create a rubric all by myself

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again. I had students that got perfect scores and I had students

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that got c's. I think that was kinda my range with c's to,

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to a's. And my overall class average was around

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85 to an 88 or something on that exam. So a little bit higher than

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I probably would have had on a final exam. But, again, going back to kind

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of that whole idea with do no harm, and I didn't want students to be

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punished because I came up with a creative way of of doing this exam. But,

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also, I think those that did well embraced the ability to be

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creative with these tools, and they played with it, and they they did something useful.

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And then others struggled a little bit, but but I

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think I was I was okay with that, right, as as an IS course and

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what I was asking students to do. So I I think it turned out well,

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and I think you can ask students to be required to do it. And it's

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just ultimately what I'm grading on now is not can

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you create the final product, but more

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like the process of how do you get to create that final product. I can

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look at the process with the prompting and those sorts of things. But also, I

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I get to see some insight into critical thinking that really I

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wasn't paying attention to before I was setting up questions in that sort of

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way. Yeah. I think that you're really on to

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something. Seems like that's the second time I've used that phrase.

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This is really chat GPT. Nevertheless, nonetheless

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Craig GTP. That's right. Craig GTP. I'm going to see if

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I can form a coherent thought here. Technology

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helps free people from mundane tasks. At

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least it can. And so we've been we in higher

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ed had higher education have

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been criticized for a long time that we focus too much on

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memorization and that sort of thing and not enough on

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critical thinking creativity, which I think is a fair criticism.

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Students need to know some things. They just need to know certain things,

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certain facts. But, you know, if I forget

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cutoff for some statistic,

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I don't sit down and memorize every possible heuristic for every

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possible statistical technique I might use, I get on

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Google and look it up or I go on Google Scholar, find a paper and

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look it up. So I don't wanna waste my

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limited brainpower remembering a bunch of stuff that I can find in 30

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seconds or a minute. And so I think you're you're kind of doing the same

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thing is yeah. I mean, they need to know the concepts, and they need

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to understand things at a certain level. But, you

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know, what are the stages in this

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process, or, what are all the components of some

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framework? You know, do they really need to memorize all

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of that? Maybe some of them, but some of them, they don't. And so

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go out to Gemini or chat GPT and look that up. And

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then the real goal is on how you apply that.

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So I I think that's kind of what I was hearing as you were talking

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about what what you did on the final. Yeah. Absolutely.

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And and it's pushing it's pushing students in the direction of

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how do you utilize tools to to do

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better. Well and I think that's a critical point for

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everybody to understand. And and you might disagree I don't think you do, but

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you might disagree with me on this. I think we have an ethical obligation,

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particularly in our field. Rob and I are both in information systems

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to help students understand how to use these new tools effectively.

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I mean, it it's not all that different than

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when spreadsheets started becoming popular. You

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know, why wouldn't you use that tool instead of pulling out your

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calculator or your slide rule or your abacus or whatever? Do you

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agree with that that we really do have an obligation to help them learn?

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Absolutely. And I think that's what students want from us as as I as

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professionals is there's a lot of fear for students of how do they enter this

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marketplace that if you watch the news, doom and gloom sells

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news. And the doom and gloom that you hear is all the jobs are gonna

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be replaced. Everything we do, the, you know, chat gbt is gonna do

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for us, which I don't think is true. I think it's gonna change the nature

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of how we do the things that we do. And with what we are as

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information systems professionals, I I think we're in a unique place where

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as we embrace and utilize these tools, I

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think our job of helping people to use technology and be able to use it

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better to do their jobs is exactly what we've been doing for decades.

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Right. And now it's at the forefront. It's a place where we can be

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leaders in ways that may have been a little bit harder to earn that ability

321
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to step up to the plate and to be able to do that. So if

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we can prepare our students to have the confidence to step into that,

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I think we're gonna have some incredible success stories that that are,

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we're gonna be able to talk about, you know, 2, 3 years from now. Well,

325
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there's a quote that's been floating around the the,

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interwebs. I I can't remember who supposedly said it.

327
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It's not that AI is gonna replace jobs.

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It's people using AI are going to replace people that don't

329
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use AI. Absolutely. And I I yeah. I think that makes a lot of

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sense. So I wanna go down a little bit different path here.

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How are you seeing your colleagues react to

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this? I I had a conversation. I'm not gonna disclose too much,

333
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but the impression this person had was that another

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entity, administrative entity,

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was basically telling students don't use it. It's cheating to use it,

336
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which kind of surprised me a little bit. But what are you hearing? So

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I'm lucky in some ways in the Carson College of Business here at

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WSU. Our leadership has embraced generative

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AI from day 1. Right? We have a an interim dean in place who is

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from an information systems background, and she

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saw the strategic vision of of generative AI. So we've been talking about

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it as a college since it hit the scene. Initially, awareness. What is

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it? How can it, you know, do for us? There's a lot of, oh, no.

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This is scary. This is bad. But we had conversations that says,

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yes. It could be, but here's how we can embrace it and here's how we

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can use it. And we've moved from the awareness stage to actually

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doing intentional things as faculty to say, okay.

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Even those of you who aren't using it yet, let's put you with those who

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are and get you confident in your ability to adopt it and to begin using

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it. So how do we move people, you know, from awareness to adoption and

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use of of the technology? And so within

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my college, we have seen very little

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resistance of people telling students that you can't use it. It's bad because we've

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had a very strong openness of conversation

355
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as as a, college to that. Where we've run

356
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into issues is there are other people at Washington State University

357
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in other classes and other disciplines where they are telling students, do not use it

358
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as cheating. It's bad. Initially, our academic

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integrity council who are looking for cheating had a policy that said, if

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2 different chat GPT detectors report

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70% or higher likelihood that it was used by chat

362
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GPT, then we're going to go ahead and call that an academic integrity

363
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violation. Okay. They've moved away from that. Thank goodness. That was kind of the initial

364
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positioning, but it it really did put a scare on people. I I've seen

365
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research that suggests that the chat GPT detectors are biased. They're

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biased to people who English is their second language because when you

367
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learn English later in life, it's usually based on rules. So you're very

368
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systematic in how you use it, and your choices of your word

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breadth is not as large as someone who who initially learned the English language. And

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so if the way we're detecting it is biased towards people that where

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English was their second language, and in many ways, that's wrong. Right? We should

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not, be using it that way. And so I I think as a higher

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institution, we're beginning to see that. But, students are getting conflicting

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messages across the different courses at least at a university

375
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level, And that's why I'm an advocate for let's talk about this as much as

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we can in the places where we can talk about it and and have influence

377
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and power to be able to do that to, you know, lead the way as

378
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opposed to put our head in the sand. Well, I'm glad to hear

379
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they're moving away from the detectors because the detectors

380
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are largely garbage. It occurs to me

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that it's tough for us to hold students completely responsible

382
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when we haven't helped them understand kind of what the guardrails

383
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are. You know, they they don't even really understand plagiarism in a

384
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lot of ways. Well, I didn't directly copy and paste it,

385
00:24:00,905 --> 00:24:04,505
or or I did and I cited it. You know, that's not plagiarism. And so

386
00:24:04,665 --> 00:24:08,160
and and, you know, plagiarism is not as black and white as sometimes

387
00:24:08,220 --> 00:24:11,680
people might think it is. So they don't understand plagiarism

388
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that's been talked about forever. How can we

389
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be sure that they understand where the limits are on using generative

390
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AI? Now I think most of them would know if you put a question

391
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in, copy and paste it, that's probably crossing the line.

392
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But anything that's close to an edge case is really confusing for

393
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everybody, especially students. And back to an earlier point you

394
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made, if we make them terrified

395
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of trying to use some new tool that's

396
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changing the way the world works, you know, we're kinda doing them a

397
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disservice. But I'm glad to hear that WSU, at

398
00:24:50,550 --> 00:24:53,965
least in the Carson College of Businesses, kind

399
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of adopted it. Our our dean was also

400
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a a big proponent of it early on. I Pretty

401
00:25:00,919 --> 00:25:04,679
early on after Chatt GPT was released, he

402
00:25:04,679 --> 00:25:08,365
had me put on a couple of brown bags, you know, for faculty,

403
00:25:08,365 --> 00:25:11,665
and we're we're working on a policy and

404
00:25:12,365 --> 00:25:16,125
those sorts of things. I actually, I think about ChattoptingPT was, you

405
00:25:16,125 --> 00:25:19,490
know, the technology that seemed to change the world just over a year ago.

406
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But when I I step back and I think about it, it's not

407
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necessarily generative AI. It's not necessarily chat GPT.

408
00:25:27,565 --> 00:25:30,785
But what's more important, I think, is how

409
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do you embrace and start using a new disruptive

410
00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:39,280
technology in the world. Right? And and so there's gonna be

411
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something else 3 years from now. And if our students aren't equipped for how do

412
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I adjust what I'm doing in the workplace and leading with technology

413
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in the workplace and figuring out how to think about these new technologies in the

414
00:25:49,945 --> 00:25:53,540
workplace, In many ways, they've lost that opportunity to

415
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be, you know, uniquely positioned to learn about it while they're, you know,

416
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sitting in a higher ed classroom right now. So it it is, I

417
00:26:01,054 --> 00:26:04,515
I think, many ways, as developmental of

418
00:26:05,190 --> 00:26:07,910
how do I do things 2 years from now when that next new thing comes

419
00:26:07,910 --> 00:26:11,750
out versus what are the rules about this one new thing that came out right

420
00:26:11,750 --> 00:26:15,015
now? Well and we tend to forget about how

421
00:26:15,795 --> 00:26:18,055
early users are often ridiculed.

422
00:26:20,320 --> 00:26:23,540
Yeah. I absolutely agree. And and and and that's where I think

423
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that's what needs to be embraced and taught about is is is how do you

424
00:26:28,605 --> 00:26:31,325
how are you that early ever? How how are you you know, when it comes

425
00:26:31,325 --> 00:26:35,025
to technology, the IS people are gonna be the ones that people look to.

426
00:26:35,085 --> 00:26:37,580
And so how do you figure out how to use it? Well, the first way

427
00:26:37,580 --> 00:26:41,180
is you just start using it. Right? And you're gonna use it in in

428
00:26:41,180 --> 00:26:45,020
ways where, you know, am I gonna make that presentation for my boss with it

429
00:26:45,020 --> 00:26:48,164
the very first time I use it? Yeah. Probably not. I'm probably gonna do something

430
00:26:48,784 --> 00:26:51,745
exploratory and fun trying to figure out what it can do for me. And as

431
00:26:51,745 --> 00:26:55,240
you build confidence in when do I know, becomes more

432
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:59,000
useful. But I I still go back to with any technology, with any decision

433
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making. It takes a level of expertise to have confidence in what's going

434
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:06,145
on. So in the process of of educating students,

435
00:27:06,525 --> 00:27:10,365
there's still the importance of developing that level of expertise for them so they

436
00:27:10,365 --> 00:27:13,910
gain that confidence. Right. But that process, you know, I I would say

437
00:27:14,210 --> 00:27:17,010
the way I teach a class today is different than the way I taught it

438
00:27:17,010 --> 00:27:20,635
20 years ago. And and that's because what

439
00:27:20,715 --> 00:27:23,355
needs to be learned has changed. You know, some of the theories are still the

440
00:27:23,355 --> 00:27:27,035
same, but how you apply them and how you use them is much, much

441
00:27:27,035 --> 00:27:30,840
different. And so, again, it's it's it's a different

442
00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:34,280
way of getting to some of the same outcomes, I think, is is where we're

443
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:37,980
going. Yep. Yep. I absolutely agree.

444
00:27:39,105 --> 00:27:42,465
So what do you see as the future of

445
00:27:42,465 --> 00:27:46,299
generative AI, especially as it relates to higher ed? How's that

446
00:27:46,299 --> 00:27:49,659
for a question? That's a great question. I I think there's a couple of

447
00:27:49,659 --> 00:27:52,960
interesting challenges. One

448
00:27:53,019 --> 00:27:56,625
is the equity of

449
00:27:56,625 --> 00:28:00,385
making it available. And it's been an interesting conversation we've had is

450
00:28:00,385 --> 00:28:03,025
is, you know, if you're gonna use it, you know, in your class, allow it

451
00:28:03,025 --> 00:28:06,850
in your class. And, my experience has been chat gpt 4. The one you

452
00:28:06,850 --> 00:28:10,550
pay for is better than chat gpt 3.5, the one you can get for free.

453
00:28:10,690 --> 00:28:13,430
What about the students who just can't afford to buy

454
00:28:14,435 --> 00:28:17,875
the better one? What disadvantage does that place to them at? How do you

455
00:28:17,875 --> 00:28:21,395
achieve conquer that? Right? Does do universities just buy site

456
00:28:21,395 --> 00:28:25,220
licenses and make it available to all the students? And then how do you agree

457
00:28:25,220 --> 00:28:28,740
on which generative AI tool you're gonna be? Who's the winner? Who's the loser? Right?

458
00:28:28,740 --> 00:28:32,475
It sounds like the the Dropbox versus Google Drive versus

459
00:28:32,635 --> 00:28:36,475
OneDrive argument that we've done with with cloud computing. So

460
00:28:36,475 --> 00:28:39,294
I I think getting that figured out is how do we

461
00:28:40,130 --> 00:28:43,570
build an equal playing field for everyone is one of the first things. But what

462
00:28:43,570 --> 00:28:47,110
makes that challenging, and and this is where I think universities

463
00:28:47,330 --> 00:28:50,995
have to get things figured out, is so

464
00:28:50,995 --> 00:28:54,115
much changes every month. Right? It seems like every time I turn around, there's something

465
00:28:54,115 --> 00:28:57,860
new with generative AI. So when, you know,

466
00:28:57,860 --> 00:29:01,700
bureaucracy gets involved, it takes forever to make a decision, and then that decision is

467
00:29:01,700 --> 00:29:05,515
stuck with for a long, long time. In a world of

468
00:29:05,515 --> 00:29:08,955
drastically changing new technologies, how

469
00:29:08,955 --> 00:29:12,649
does that get get baked into everything

470
00:29:12,649 --> 00:29:16,409
as well? So I I think we're at at this explosive stage with a lot

471
00:29:16,409 --> 00:29:19,850
of new things, which really, you know, with things changing

472
00:29:19,850 --> 00:29:23,065
fast, the bureaucracy of universities is gonna have an interesting

473
00:29:23,524 --> 00:29:27,225
challenge that is in front of it is how do they

474
00:29:27,445 --> 00:29:31,110
make this a part of who they are in a way that doesn't

475
00:29:31,110 --> 00:29:34,950
limit the avail availability of of creative tools and the use

476
00:29:34,950 --> 00:29:38,705
of those creative tools as they come onto the market? You're spot on.

477
00:29:38,705 --> 00:29:41,125
There there are gonna be some serious equity issues,

478
00:29:42,145 --> 00:29:45,605
especially as generative AI tools

479
00:29:46,060 --> 00:29:49,440
are increasingly embedded in other tools.

480
00:29:49,740 --> 00:29:53,580
I I think that's the future. Matter of fact, Rob and Franz

481
00:29:53,580 --> 00:29:57,395
Belanger, and I were on a call with our publisher, and

482
00:29:57,395 --> 00:30:00,914
that came up. You know, in a in a couple of years, we're not really

483
00:30:00,914 --> 00:30:04,680
gonna be talking about chat GPT all that much. AI is just gonna

484
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:08,120
be in everything. I mean, when was the last time a normal person used the

485
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:11,420
term ecommerce? It's just commerce.

486
00:30:12,275 --> 00:30:15,955
You know? And that's what AI is going towards. And so, you know,

487
00:30:15,955 --> 00:30:19,630
maybe you can scrape together the $20 for chatgptpro

488
00:30:20,250 --> 00:30:24,030
or Gemini advanced or, you know, Po or whatever it is. But

489
00:30:25,130 --> 00:30:28,975
what if there are all these AI tools that are $10

490
00:30:28,975 --> 00:30:32,815
a month, $20 a month? You know, there's one that's an

491
00:30:32,815 --> 00:30:36,580
accounting tutor, and there's one that's like Grammarly

492
00:30:36,580 --> 00:30:40,179
and helps you write. And there's another one that helps you do research and

493
00:30:40,179 --> 00:30:43,355
on and on and on. And now all of a sudden, you know, you're at

494
00:30:43,355 --> 00:30:46,875
a couple $100 a month, which is a lot of

495
00:30:46,875 --> 00:30:50,635
money to a lot of students. And so I'm I'm pretty

496
00:30:50,635 --> 00:30:54,210
concerned about that. And I I guess those inequities have been around forever,

497
00:30:55,309 --> 00:30:58,850
but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to find ways to

498
00:30:58,910 --> 00:31:02,485
mitigate them. Yeah. No. I think I think some we absolutely have to be

499
00:31:02,485 --> 00:31:05,925
pushing talking about. And I know organizations I've talked to are

500
00:31:05,925 --> 00:31:09,650
concerned about paying all these fees for for use of

501
00:31:09,650 --> 00:31:13,410
things. And so it's gonna be interesting if it's a a third party product

502
00:31:13,410 --> 00:31:17,005
that's completely owned by, you know, the

503
00:31:17,005 --> 00:31:20,765
big companies or if our our our university is gonna say, you know

504
00:31:20,765 --> 00:31:24,480
what? We're gonna develop and host our own large language model or

505
00:31:24,559 --> 00:31:28,240
own language model where we control what are the inputs of of

506
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:32,020
of information. Because because right now, you know, when you look at OpenAI,

507
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:35,664
ChatDpT, there's a very, very large amount of information that

508
00:31:35,664 --> 00:31:39,505
feeds into that. And is all of that relevant important to what

509
00:31:39,505 --> 00:31:43,290
I am teaching in a cybersecurity class, or would students be better

510
00:31:43,290 --> 00:31:47,130
served having a language model that was purposely designed for

511
00:31:47,130 --> 00:31:50,830
what we're gonna, be teaching here? I I have a

512
00:31:51,005 --> 00:31:54,685
a colleague that's experimenting with using he's an using an open

513
00:31:54,685 --> 00:31:58,525
source textbook that he used to feed into a language model.

514
00:31:58,525 --> 00:32:02,309
So it became the chat GPT, if you will, and then students

515
00:32:02,309 --> 00:32:05,529
could utilize a chatbot to ask the textbook questions.

516
00:32:06,470 --> 00:32:10,025
We did that with our textbook. I was doing a little bit of consulting work

517
00:32:10,025 --> 00:32:13,865
with a firm that was working on an AI based

518
00:32:13,865 --> 00:32:17,640
tool, and our publisher gave us the permission to take an earlier edition of

519
00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:21,419
the textbook, load it into this large language model,

520
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:25,015
and then students could just go ask questions of it.

521
00:32:25,575 --> 00:32:29,415
Unfortunately, the product didn't survive. It went in a

522
00:32:29,415 --> 00:32:32,935
different direction. The company survived. The product didn't, which

523
00:32:32,935 --> 00:32:36,650
is is not all that unusual. But I thought that this is

524
00:32:36,650 --> 00:32:40,170
really something because I don't know about your

525
00:32:40,170 --> 00:32:43,755
students, but but the students that I've been

526
00:32:43,755 --> 00:32:47,595
around in the last 8 or 10 years, really, they don't

527
00:32:47,595 --> 00:32:50,815
wanna come to office hours. They don't wanna email you with questions

528
00:32:51,690 --> 00:32:55,450
unless they're grade grubbing at the end of the term. You know,

529
00:32:55,450 --> 00:32:59,049
they get stuck on something, and they don't know what to do, so they just

530
00:32:59,049 --> 00:33:02,745
kinda give up. Well, if there was a a model, you know,

531
00:33:02,745 --> 00:33:06,585
textbook GPT or whatever it is where they can just say, I

532
00:33:06,585 --> 00:33:10,360
don't understand the difference between these two definitions, and they get

533
00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:13,900
an answer. Was that as good as talking to the professor?

534
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:17,500
Maybe not, but it might be good enough.

535
00:33:18,095 --> 00:33:21,375
Well, and is it available at 2 o'clock in the morning when they decide they're

536
00:33:21,375 --> 00:33:24,514
gonna do their coursework? Right? I I may be sleeping and unavailable,

537
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:28,980
but if they can get help from the technology at the moment

538
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,420
that they're struggling, you know, that's that's helpful.

539
00:33:32,935 --> 00:33:36,475
Yeah. The downside of of some of what you were talking about is

540
00:33:37,175 --> 00:33:40,795
we may separate out the haves and have nots in terms of institutions.

541
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:45,360
Mhmm. Most schools aren't gonna have the resources to do those

542
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:49,095
kinds of things, and very few professors will. So

543
00:33:49,095 --> 00:33:52,534
it's gonna be interesting to see, you know, do we respond do we respond at

544
00:33:52,534 --> 00:33:56,375
a system level? Do we get consortia of schools or,

545
00:33:56,375 --> 00:34:00,150
you know, how do we navigate that? But I think these

546
00:34:00,150 --> 00:34:03,990
localized large language models are are really gonna

547
00:34:03,990 --> 00:34:07,365
be part of the future as well. Rob, we've been talking

548
00:34:07,505 --> 00:34:11,125
primarily about educational use, but there's a lot of potential

549
00:34:11,985 --> 00:34:15,580
to get rid of some of the administrative drudgery using

550
00:34:15,580 --> 00:34:19,120
generative AI. You're a department chair, so you unfortunately have the administrative

551
00:34:19,179 --> 00:34:22,860
drudgery more than us lucky faculty members, or is it we lucky

552
00:34:22,860 --> 00:34:26,474
faculty members do. So are you using it or

553
00:34:26,474 --> 00:34:29,775
thinking about using it for any for your administrative duties?

554
00:34:30,474 --> 00:34:33,960
Thanks, Greg. Yeah. I've been starting to a little bit. And and one of the

555
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:37,500
places where I've used it is sometimes you get asked

556
00:34:37,719 --> 00:34:41,135
questions that are hard to answer, that you know you

557
00:34:41,135 --> 00:34:44,415
want to answer, you know how you're going to answer it, but you need to

558
00:34:44,415 --> 00:34:47,955
write that email that is, you know, firm but sensitive

559
00:34:48,140 --> 00:34:51,820
and and is, you know, to the point. And I spent a lot of time

560
00:34:51,820 --> 00:34:55,340
struggling when I write emails like that and and probably way more time thinking about

561
00:34:55,340 --> 00:34:59,115
how to send that response than I should. And out of

562
00:34:59,115 --> 00:35:02,655
curiosity and frustration, I I asked chat gpt

563
00:35:02,875 --> 00:35:05,620
to write an email like that for me so I could respond and say, you

564
00:35:05,620 --> 00:35:08,820
know, I want a email that is going to be written to tell a person

565
00:35:08,820 --> 00:35:12,660
that, in this case, it was someone who is seeking a job that

566
00:35:12,660 --> 00:35:16,425
we were deciding, you know, not to hire them. How do I reply to this

567
00:35:16,425 --> 00:35:20,185
email? And it gave me an answer, and it gave me a 5

568
00:35:20,185 --> 00:35:23,705
paragraph answer that was so fluffy and full of

569
00:35:23,705 --> 00:35:27,359
just nice words. And I'm like, you know, I don't wanna say all that. Right?

570
00:35:27,359 --> 00:35:30,420
It was it was overly wordy. And so I said, could you make it shorter?

571
00:35:31,119 --> 00:35:34,494
And so it condensed it down. It went from 5 paragraphs to 4. I said,

572
00:35:34,494 --> 00:35:36,974
well, can you make it shorter? It gave me 3. I have one more time.

573
00:35:36,974 --> 00:35:40,255
Can you make it shorter? I got 2 paragraphs, and it was really close to

574
00:35:40,255 --> 00:35:44,060
what I would want to say. And so I copy pasted it, made a

575
00:35:44,060 --> 00:35:47,900
few minor edits. And something that would have made I would have struggled

576
00:35:47,900 --> 00:35:51,595
and second guessed myself about how to write that email for 20 minutes to

577
00:35:51,595 --> 00:35:55,355
a half an hour. I was done in 3 minutes, and I felt confident

578
00:35:55,355 --> 00:35:59,115
that I had done a good job of appropriately, giving

579
00:35:59,115 --> 00:36:02,930
feedback. And so in in some ways, that that struggle with how do

580
00:36:02,930 --> 00:36:06,770
you how do you write a message that you never thought you would be

581
00:36:06,770 --> 00:36:10,464
asked in an email question from somebody or whatever, which happens way too

582
00:36:10,464 --> 00:36:13,984
often as a department chair. In in some ways, it can really help you to

583
00:36:13,984 --> 00:36:16,464
be able to get to the the point of, you know, I know what I

584
00:36:16,464 --> 00:36:19,960
wanna say, but how do I put the words around it that show people

585
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:23,560
dignity, show people respect, and and do so in a way that has the the

586
00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:27,005
kind of voice I'd like to have and how I communicated that. But I've

587
00:36:27,005 --> 00:36:30,684
also used it to have it right, structure of

588
00:36:30,684 --> 00:36:34,125
policy statements or whatever. We're working on, you know, we need to have a a

589
00:36:34,125 --> 00:36:37,790
policy that's gonna address blah blah blah blah blah. You know, usually,

590
00:36:37,790 --> 00:36:41,550
they're pretty standard in in kind of what the format looks like.

591
00:36:41,550 --> 00:36:45,330
And to get a professional starting point for how you're gonna put a document together,

592
00:36:45,765 --> 00:36:49,445
it just saves that 20 minutes of getting started, which is

593
00:36:49,445 --> 00:36:53,205
helpful. Yeah. And and where we don't really add value. I mean, I I think

594
00:36:53,205 --> 00:36:56,850
that's part of what I keep hearing that excites

595
00:36:56,850 --> 00:37:00,690
me is we can focus where we add value and get

596
00:37:00,690 --> 00:37:04,235
rid of some of the things where we don't add value. One of

597
00:37:04,235 --> 00:37:07,755
my very favorite prompts is please critique

598
00:37:07,755 --> 00:37:11,470
this. And it's really good at pointing out

599
00:37:11,630 --> 00:37:15,170
holes and logic or, you know, if you miss some

600
00:37:15,230 --> 00:37:18,990
element of a policy or you don't put something

601
00:37:18,990 --> 00:37:22,615
in an email message, it's pretty good at pointing out

602
00:37:22,615 --> 00:37:26,375
those those sorts of holes, I think. So Yeah.

603
00:37:26,375 --> 00:37:30,055
And and another place and as you're in, you know, administrative roles and dealing with

604
00:37:30,055 --> 00:37:33,840
bureaucracy, you're oftentimes told to make something for this and submit

605
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:37,520
it, but it can only be 250 words. And you're alright. And

606
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:41,155
then I'm like, oh, no. That's 300 words. And that process of trying to carve

607
00:37:41,155 --> 00:37:44,995
out 50 words can be tough. And and I've learned I can actually

608
00:37:44,995 --> 00:37:48,760
take a document like that and say, please take this and reduce it to

609
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:52,440
250 words or less. Yeah. And it does a really good job of saying

610
00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:56,280
the exact same thing I wanna say, but doing it in a slightly

611
00:37:56,280 --> 00:37:59,945
more efficient manner. Yeah. Those are both great examples of of

612
00:37:59,945 --> 00:38:03,725
things that are just kinda tough to do that you can do pretty quickly and

613
00:38:04,185 --> 00:38:07,740
ethically. You know, how is that any different than,

614
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:11,960
you know, giving a message to somebody and saying, hey. Can

615
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:15,525
you help me figure out how to say this in a little bit kinder

616
00:38:15,525 --> 00:38:19,125
way? Mhmm. But at the end of the day, you're

617
00:38:19,125 --> 00:38:22,950
responsible for what's in that that email. You know? So I

618
00:38:22,950 --> 00:38:26,490
think where I see people screwing up, like, I think Vanderbilt did

619
00:38:27,110 --> 00:38:30,950
early on, is they just take what generative AI puts

620
00:38:30,950 --> 00:38:34,555
out, and that's what it is. There's no human in the loop

621
00:38:35,095 --> 00:38:38,855
making sure that it that it's quality. So Yep. And

622
00:38:38,855 --> 00:38:41,930
in all cases, I read it, and I I I ask myself, is this is

623
00:38:41,930 --> 00:38:45,450
this what I would say and how I would say it? Because sometimes I get

624
00:38:45,450 --> 00:38:49,125
phraseology that's like, you know, I would never use that phrase in my life.

625
00:38:49,285 --> 00:38:52,245
So I changed it to the phrase I would use. You know? And so I

626
00:38:52,245 --> 00:38:55,685
I but if you just save me 15 minutes, that's

627
00:38:55,685 --> 00:38:59,260
15, I can spend on something else. So Yeah. I mean, I mean, how

628
00:38:59,319 --> 00:39:03,079
how wonderful is it that to have a tool that can cut out

629
00:39:03,079 --> 00:39:06,680
3 quarters of something? Mhmm. You know, even if it doesn't take your effort to

630
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:10,365
0, it can still save a lot of time.

631
00:39:11,065 --> 00:39:14,845
Absolutely. Alright. Any last words? Anything you wanna plug? Any

632
00:39:14,985 --> 00:39:18,720
last bit of advice? I guess I would go back

633
00:39:18,720 --> 00:39:21,540
to give yourself the ability to be creative

634
00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:26,105
and to take your intellectual curiosity and put it to work because you

635
00:39:26,105 --> 00:39:29,865
may find some surprising interesting ways to use things. And then once

636
00:39:29,865 --> 00:39:33,530
you've found them, talk about them, a, in the hallways of those that you're

637
00:39:33,530 --> 00:39:37,130
working with, you know, so that way you can spur conversations, and,

638
00:39:37,130 --> 00:39:40,970
b, as you have opportunities into greater academic

639
00:39:40,970 --> 00:39:44,625
conversations, whether it's through Craig's channel here

640
00:39:44,625 --> 00:39:48,385
or if it's through academic conferences you attend. But, don't don't keep

641
00:39:48,385 --> 00:39:52,130
your mouth shut about this. You know? Great. Bring your experiences

642
00:39:52,190 --> 00:39:55,626
to the conversation so we can all learn from each other. Alright.

643
00:39:55,926 --> 00:39:59,686
Well, thanks again, and I think we're done.

644
00:39:59,686 --> 00:40:01,466
We're out. Thanks, Greg.