Department Chair Avery Holton Speaks to PBS Insight
On last Friday's episode of PBS Insight Department Chair Avery Holton joined the conversation
about Artifical Intelligence with fellow guests Dr. David Wingate, Ilana Beller, and
host Liz Adeola. Their conversation revolved around generative AI, a type of Artifical
Intelligence that is able to generate outputs that feel human-like whether through
images, text, or video. There is no doubt the budding conversation about AI has caused
strong emotions among the general public, oftentimes resulting in either fear and
anxiety or excitement.
Artifical Intelligence has been called a "disruptive techonogy" due to its meteoric rise and exponential growth. Dr. Wingate remarked how a year ago many of us didn't even know AI existed. Since then this techology has become a major presence in elementary, secondary, and even higher education at our very own University. Dr. Holton spoke about the Responsible AI Initiative that the University has employed to enforce transparency when AI is used and the learning tool AI can be in classrooms. Students studying languages and communication have done close-listenings of AI generated, or cloned language to see where it depars from feeling human and what to look out for.
There's also a darker side of AI that can be used to promote misinformation, distruct, and malintentions. This is especially concerning considering we are in an election year that presents a challege to seperate fact from fiction.
Dr. Holton's advice, make AI more friendly. Engage with it and be in spaces with it to improve AI literacy. By approacing Artificial Intelligence with a willlingness and an openess you can form opinions based on your experience and understand the topic holistically.
Join the conversation and watch the episode at the link below: