Campus Conversation: Intelligence comes in all forms, not just artificial
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How artificial is my intelligence?
That’s one of the conversations I’ve been having with myself in the quieter moments of this summer break.
Not that we’ve had too many quieter moments on campus.
Alongside the usual annual maintenance works this year, we’ve faced two additional challenges.
Just as our academic staff were going off on leave, the Scottish Funding Council issued revised guidance on funding for college programmes next year.
That meant we had to adjust and re-approve every single full-time programme that we’ll be running.
We’ve also been pulling together final approval documents to release funding for our Moray Growth Deal projects – not a simple task.
In the midst of these additional commitments this summer, I’ve been looking for help in sharing my own workload.
With all the recent attention given to Artificial Intelligence (AI), I decided to download a popular app to see if I could get some help with drafting this article.
I asked the app to write me a 500-word piece for this paper.
I suggested it start with a relevant and positive anecdote, then describe some of the many ways this college contributes to our community here, and finally, given that ‘results day’ is only a couple of weeks away, offer a reminder of the benefits of enrolling with UHI Moray in the new academic year.
The first anecdote AI offered me didn’t seem that appropriate. “Now that the snow has melted, and the spring flowers are beginning to bloom…”.
The second version seemed downright rude! “As I walked through town the other day, I saw a bumper sticker that made me chuckle. It said “College: the best four years of your life – if you’re a slow learner”.
The core article, however, was very appropriate and very well written.
It gave a clear message regarding the benefits that a good college brings to its community, the high quality of teaching and learning offered, and a compelling argument for why you should sign up on a learning programme at the end of the summer.
I was impressed, but it clearly wasn’t written by me.
The language was a bit ‘transatlantic’. It lacked distinctive local reference points, and it didn’t offer my occasional unexpected jumps in logic, nor the understated modesty you would expect from a principal of UHI Moray.
I asked the app to be a bit more subtle in the proposition it was selling, and it duly obliged.
It wrote, “No hard sell, no pressure, just a gentle nudge towards considering UHI Moray for your educational journey.”
Like every advance in technology, Artificial Intelligence offers both opportunities and risks.
As well as helping to automate tasks, improve analytics for decision-making, and freeing-up time for hard-pressed principals, it also presents significant risks in terms of job displacement, biased outcomes, privacy and security.
I know, because I asked it that too.
For the time being though, this article will still be written by a fallible, idiosyncratic human writer, who will also offer you now a gentle nudge to join our ‘results day’ drop-in on Wednesday, August 9 (10am – 3pm) if you need to discuss your options.
David Patterson is the principal of UHI Moray.
