Last fall, the University of Michigan became the first university in the country to release a generative artificial intelligence tool with UM-GPT, a rebranded version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E. Given much of the discourse surrounding AI and academic integrity, the University’s decision to launch its own powerful AI toolcame as a surprise. While students generally view generative AI as a useful tool to support education, professors have mixed reactions.
Some professors advocate for the use of AI to assist with brainstorming, researching and problem solving. Other professors adopt a more oppositional view, strictly advising against using AI to supplement traditional education methods. But AI has the potential to transform the education and job market, and professors should learn to incorporate it into their curriculums.
AI could drastically improve labor productivity, but only if it is used effectively on the individual level. Understanding how AI can be used as a resource instead of a means to cheat is crucial to recognizing why professors and students should use them to their advantage.
Chatbots are not easy to use in a trustworthy fashion. It takes practice and requires users to lead the AI through a series of logically ordered prompts in order to extract the best information possible. Skills like these are becoming increasingly relevant for a job applicant’s competitiveness in the market. In the last two years, job postings mentioning AI skills have more than doubled on LinkedIn. This includes job postings for positions related to AI development, such as software engineers, and also for management or consulting jobs that list familiarity with AI as a desired skill. ResumeBuilder conducted a survey on 750 business leaders planning to use AI in 2024, and 83% said that AI skills will help existing employees retain their jobs.
Moreover, the possibility to work in fields or at companies using AI excites job seekers. LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends report found that in the past two years, job postings that mention traditional AI or generative AI have seen 17% greater application growth than postings without these mentions. This popularity indicates that many see industries that take advantage of AI as places of opportunity. Universities should follow suit and incorporate AI into their curriculum when applicable to student development.
It’s essential that higher education institutions notice the benefits of AI. The programs’ ability to support learning is quite evident for quantitative or computer science fields, where chatbots can help students work through problems or give examples to help explain difficult concepts. They can also be of use to students in the social sciences, serving as study partners or researching tools — not taking the place of critical thinking, but reinforcing it.
Researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education emphasize that teaching students how to ask good questions and providing a framework for the AI to work in tandem with students are both key to creating a productive learning environment in light of this new technology. They also highlight the importance of showing students what AI can’t do. Professors at the University should experiment with these methods themselves and find innovative ways to use AI in their courses to help students develop skills beneficial for the job market.
This technology is new to everyone. Professors are no better than students at figuring out how to use AI. Fitting AI into traditional education will require collaboration between the two groups as they test new methods and exchange feedback. Experts are optimistic about the future of education in a world with advanced AI.
AI has the potential to enhance personalized support for teachers, limit fear of judgment in learning environments, improve teaching and assessment quality, and place a greater emphasis on critical thinking as opposed to memorization. AI’s place in education could be similar to the introduction of the calculator into math courses; students still learn how to do basic arithmetic, but are now able to perform difficult, complex calculations much quicker.
Concerns about AI’s implications on academic integrity are well-founded. However, in some quantitative fields, students using AI to help solve problems may not be such a bad thing, as student collaboration with AI is a useful skill and may become the norm in the near future. In more writing-based disciplines, adapting to the ubiquity of AI will require professors and teachers to find new ways to create authentic assessments. Possible solutions include asking students to engage directly with course texts, including build-up stages and asking for genuine nuance and analysis. Structuring assessments in this way will promote critical thinking, and makes it difficult for students to use AI to cheat.
Aside from AI’s potential improvements to education, professors have another reason to continually adapt to new technological developments. While there will always be a place for human interaction in education, future innovations have the potential to drastically alter the role of professors. Fifty percent of AI experts predict that general AI, which mimics the neural function of the human brain, will be released to the public by 2061. In the long term, the use of generative AI as a tutor tailored to students’ learning styles might take over the role of the human teacher. This structure of teaching would give students support not possible in the current model of education. From a technological standpoint, this is a ways off, and likely not something that professors will need to worry about in the next decade or two.
Still, the field of education is changing rapidly, and teachers must keep up with the latest educational innovations to continue to be effective and competitive in the job market. The University took a bold step by releasing UM-GPT and should continue to support AI’s integration into education for the benefit of U-M students and professors.
Ethan Bittner is an Opinion Columnist studying economics. He writes about American culture and the global climate crisis. Ethan can be reached at ebittner@umich.edu.