Long after OpenAI’s ChatGPT was introduced to the general public on Nov. 30, 2022, SLU administration released a statement via email to all students and faculty, announcing the arrival of new artificial intelligence guidelines meant to help navigate appropriate uses of AI. This email last semester addressed the rapid growth of the technology and its integration into education tools.
Since consumer-focused AI products have become widely available, it has sparked mass uncertainty about how the new tools would be incorporated into daily life. SLU, like many other academic institutions, initially struggled to find solutions to the many new challenges AI presents.
These guidelines have acted as an important benchmark for student and faculty based discussion surrounding the ethical use of AI and if or how AI should be incorporated into universal university curriculum.
Voters in the Saint Louis region have already taken steps against AI projects, striking down a proposal to construct a new data center in St. Charles and more recently, ousting four council members who approved of a data center facility in Festus, Missouri. Despite the opposition, a data center was approved to be constructed in Midtown’s Armory building.
SLU history professor Thomas Finan said he believes AI is not going away and students should learn to work with it.
“This technology isn’t a fad; this is something we are all going to have to struggle with,” Finan said.
SLU, as a part of their Microsoft Office Suite available to all students, has integrated Microsoft Copilot across all university apps.
Despite the institution wide email, many students are unaware of how these guidelines will impact programs and how significantly they should be interpreted. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Donna LaVoie, said the guidelines were a “rule of thumb at most.” Finan said the guidelines are “prescriptive” and suggested the university needs to do more to address the innovation of AI.
“[The guidelines] say don’t do this, don’t do that,” Finan said. “The problem is we want to have a policy that says what we should be doing.”
Other faculty have taken a different view, such as SLU political science professor and AI researcher, Nori Katagiri. He said he thought the university has “done enough” based on where AI is at right now, but that there was future progress to be made where “the legal framework changes to adjust to technological advancements.”
The university’s guidelines give the power of discretion to professors when they are drafting policies regarding AI for inclusion in their class syllabi. Despite the flexibility, LaVoie said the imbalance of exposure and experience can cause inequities in student learning based on an individual’s major.
“Who uses it and who doesn’t use it varies by the discipline in arts and sciences,” said LaVoie. “The English department for sure is concerned about it because that is their craft, AI disrupts that.”
While many faculty in the College of Art and Science take a more cautious approach to artificial intelligence, the Dean of the Chafetz School of Business, Jackson Nickerson said his departments are more comfortable with embracing the tool.
“For us, it’s less about the technology and more about how we use the technology,” Nickerson said. “We want to ensure that we’re accelerating and deepening a student’s critical thinking as opposed to making it more shallow.”
LaVoie said that the differences in how professors authorize AI usage in their classrooms may have lasting effects on students’ professional development.
“The students that I have spoken to tell me is when they go out for an internship, and one of the questions they’re asked is, how do you use AI in your job?” LaVoie said, “Sometimes the students feel, oh, it’s a gotcha.”
Finan said that AI could amplify existing socio-economic disparities as the price of AI tools rises.
“What if there’s somebody in your class whose parents say, ‘I want my son or daughter to have the $200 version.’ That person has the cutting edge version. And you’re paying the $7 one,” said Finan, “that other guy might be getting a leg up, and you are telling yourself, he seems to understand the content better than I do.”
LaVoie said that with how quickly AI has advanced so far, it could become increasingly difficult to keep up at the institutional level.
“It’s a technology that’s advancing so fast,” LaVoie said. “We can’t keep up with our own knowledge about how to use it and why to use it. And that is always the open door to doing something wrong.”
An increasingly common theme in the world of business has been business leaders advocating for college students to use the tool declaring those who are not using it to be behind in their professional career. This puts School of Business Dean Nickerson in a peculiar position. The business school has long been pioneering on the AI front for the University, blending state of the art technology with a Jesuit mission.
“The Chaifetz’s way encapsulates Jesuit values for the future and how we can prepare you to launch your professional journey in a good way,” Nickerson said.
His primary mission is to find a balance between applying prudent AI utilization, enhancing learning whilst not going too far where it reduces student’s critical thinking skills. “But if you just use AI without guidance, without process, that’s where it can undermine that training.”
