As artificial intelligence becomes more ingrained in daily life, many workers worry about what it might mean for their jobs and the future of the workforce. WAMC's Sajina Shrestha spoke with SUNY Chancellor John King Jr. about how the institution is preparing students to handle AI-driven changes.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been slightly edited for clarity.
King: The reality is AI is here, so every university needs to have a thoughtful response. Fact is, we know students are going to be asked when they go to those job interviews after they graduate, "What are your skills around AI?" And they're going to have to demonstrate that they know how to use AI as a tool in the workplace. So, we've got to build those skills in our students. We've added a general education requirement around information literacy with AI. We are also working with faculty to integrate AI skills into courses. If a student's training to be a nurse or an architect, we want our students to have the ability to use AI effectively. We also have to protect the learning. We have to make sure that students aren't using AI to substitute for doing the critical thinking, the writing that is going to help them build their skills. We are working with faculty, providing professional development so that faculty can change their courses. In some cases, sometimes it's more old-fashioned blue books, more oral presentations, projects that students work on with a TA in a supervised environment, strategies to make sure that students are doing the work.
Shrestha: When you think of AI in the workforce, I think of recently the article that came out about people in middle management jobs essentially training AI, then being replaced by that same AI. I was wondering if you could touch more on those skills that you talked about. Of how are you making sure these students are learning, but also having enough unique skills that they themselves won't be replaced?
King: You know the way I think about is students not going to lose their job necessarily to AI as much as they might lose their job to someone else who knows how to use AI as a tool. If you're going to work, let's say in a manufacturing company, understanding what parts of the manufacturing process might be better automated, or what parts of a customer service experience might be more efficient if automated? Where does AI fit in the production process? That could be a very useful skill. If you are training to be to do health and nutrition work, to be a part of the healthcare community, you have to know that some of your clients are going to come in having asked AI, 'what should I eat, what should my exercise plan be?' And so you've got to understand what does the research say, what's in the textbook, but then also have familiarity with AI tools, so you know what your clients might be getting from the AI before they come in to see you. It's very practical in every field to sort of sit down and think about okay, where's the role of AI in this field, and how do we prepare our students?
Shrestha: Amongst the youth, some of them there's a little bit of hesitation with using AI, right? How would you talk to these students about not just how to implement AI into their workforce, but also what would you tell them to kind of show that it is being done in a more energy-efficient way?
King: We've got to grapple with those ethical questions. I was with one of our faculty members yesterday at SUNY Farmingdale, who was talking about how she asks her students to read about and then write about these hard questions about the energy use of AI. 'What are the proper guardrails for AI? How might AI disrupt our democracy and undermine elections?' Because people are using AI to generate false advertisements and even false images and dialog. So, you know, we as an educational institution have a responsibility to help students grapple with those questions, but I think the reality is students are using it a lot. You know, there was a common sense media study of teenagers, high school students, that found more than 70% of students reported using AI to do their schoolwork. That's very worrisome because in that same study, less than 30% of students reported having conversations with their teachers about AI. So we want to make sure that we are having these conversations with students and emphasizing to them the importance of AI being a tool, not a crutch; AI being a resource, but not the source of all answers; not allowing themselves to do what some people refer to as cognitive offloading, where, when something's hard, you just ask AI and write down whatever AI said because that's not actually learning. Part of learning is struggle, is talking with the teacher, talking with your peers, trying to figure out the question, and we want to make sure students know the importance of that learning process.
Shrestha: There's a lot of conversation in the national level of what are we doing to regulate AI. You touched on the importance of making sure students are prepared to use AI in the workforce since it's so integrated into every single workforce. Could you talk more about what steps SUNY is taking to make sure there are guardrails around cybersecurity when it comes to AI, because of said fears of what happens if a model goes rogue? I mean SUNY has a lot of important information about a kid's income, where they live, what they're studying. So, what are some steps you're taking to ensure that this data remains within the system, even as they're using AI?
King: I would say cybersecurity, information security is a huge priority for us. Just this past spring, we adopted a system-wide policy on AI. Our board of trustees, after gathering lots of input from faculty and staff, and every campus is now working on a campus policy that builds on that system-wide policy to make sure that when it comes to decision-making, that there's always a human in the loop. That decisions are not made by AI. We are making sure we're putting in place strong cybersecurity measures to protect our data and to protect research, important research that our faculty are doing. We are also working to ensure that our campuses understand what some of the AI risks are and threats that are created, but ultimately we need the federal government to step up here. I'm very disappointed that we haven't seen more federal leadership in Congress around trying to put some guardrails around this industry.
