W&L needs to ensure its students can master the new AI toolkit
By The Editorial Board

Blackboards and lacquered desks still dominate the nineteenth-century buildings lining the colonnade. Books are pushed to the deepest depths of the brutalist Leyburn Library, where collaborative spaces are foregrounded on the main floor. Off to one side, finance students frequent the Bloomberg terminal and numerous computer stations.

Perhaps more than most schools, W&L glaringly evidences education’s numerous transitions. The school now confronts the most sudden development in education to-date: the advent of AI-assisted research with the November release of ChatGPT, an online platform that can synthesize information and even write entire essays.

ChatGPT’s rapid impact is precisely what interests business professor Jeff Schatten. “It’s slow, slow, slow, and then it hits all at once, and we’re at the all at once phase,” Schatten said in an interview. “Industries and sectors across the economy are waking up right now.”

Behind the scenes, W&L is no different. “Three days after [ChatGPT] launched, I sent an email to President Dudley and Provost Hill explaining why this is a very big deal,” Professor Schatten said. “I cannot stress how enormous the scope of change is that we’re about to go through. And that’s why we’re going to look back in ten years, and I don’t think we’re going to recognize the world that we left.”

A few weeks ago, Schatten gave a presentation to faculty about the new technology. Ninety faculty and staff members attended, according to Schatten.

Given AI’s massive implications, now is no time for conservatism. Successfully integrating ChatGPT is imperative if W&L is to continue training young professionals with a competitive edge in the labor force.

Technology is labor augmenting. Goods and services are produced by pairing people with the needed tools and machines. Better, more advanced machines raise workers’ value and productivity.

ChatGPT and other AI services are sophisticated machines which will allow workers across occupations to perform their jobs better. For example, ChatGPT can generate computer code which a developer can then review and refine. Without the onerous burden of churning out lines of basic code, the developer is freed to consider intricacies and higher order concerns.

Firms have an incentive to implement AI solutions quickly. By raising a given worker’s productivity, labor-augmenting technology lowers the workers needed for a set level of output. If, as seems the case, AI solutions cost less than a worker, firms can lower costs by drawing down their workforce.

The people—and students—who are able to master and use AI platforms will command jobs and higher wages moving forward. Individuals who lack the requisite skills will lose out. As a university training young people for a variety of occupations, W&L has an obligation to teach effective use of AI tools.

“Our job as professors,” explained Gavin Fox, a business professor at W&L, “is to prepare students for their professional lives.” AI is here, he continued. “It's going to keep growing in use. And our students need to know how to incorporate it effectively or they will be beaten to the line professionally by those who can. “

AI is no substitute for competence, though. ChatGPT may be able to generate an essay, but “it can produce incorrect or harmful content” and “dull writing,” according to Professor Bill Oliver, director of the W&L Writing Center. Students will need to judge whether AI-produced content is up to snuff. To do so, they will still need to think for themselves.

Having engaged with the issue at a recent writing education conference, Oliver noted the central theme struck by pro-ChatGPT educators: rather than ban the use of AI, “the goal should be to teach students how to use it responsibly.”

Accordingly, Professor Fox has adjusted his course expectations to push his students in this new era. He believes professors “need to up the ante on what it means to be intellectual and require more out-of-the-box thinking.” “Students need to be able to assess the veracity of what ChatGPT has given them. We should be giving them the abilities to do that, not simply offering buckets of knowledge they could get just by reading books or watching YouTube,” Fox said.

For Fox, reckoning with AI will shake the entire educational establishment. “Standardized tests and routinization in primary and secondary education are yielding people who can easily be replaced by AI,” he said. “The entire enterprise of education from pre-school on is going to need a really hard look over the next decade.”

The opinions expressed in this magazine are the author's own and do not reflect the official policy or position of The Spectator, or any students or other contributors associated with the magazine. It is the intention of The Spectator to promote student thought and civil discourse, and it is our hope to maintain that civility in all discussions.