On Feb. 18, soon-to-be Director of Academic AI Initiatives George Cusack hosted a roundtable discussion about Artificial Intelligence (AI). The discussion hosted faculty, staff and students from across Carleton to discuss the role of AI at Carleton. This year, according to a Fall Term Carleton Today, was designated as “The Year of AI Curiosity.” The discussion reflects the ongoing discussion of how AI should be regulated or incorporated at Carleton.
“It sounded like it was really useful in… getting a sense of other perspectives on AI, you know, students seeing how faculty think about it, faculty seeing how students are thinking about it,” Cusack said, “A lot of people mentioned learning something new about how it works or how people might use it.”
Cusack, the current Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, will assume the additional position of Director of Academic AI Initiatives as a result of increased consideration of AI in classes at Carleton, which is largely driven by Provost Michelle Mattson.
“Over last school year, [Mattson] became increasingly interested in trying to get, not necessarily college-wide policies set in place, but at least a common level of understanding among the faculty about how AI was affecting student work and what we could do about it,” Cusack said.
Cusack explained that his new role as Director of Academic AI Initiatives came as a natural evolution from his previous role. “I had already started doing some of that in my job as Writing Across the Curriculum Director,” he said. “I created some materials online for how to create a course policy, how to run an assignment through ChatGPT, those kinds of things.”
“The main thing I’m trying to do in my job is just make sure faculty are thinking about it in some way, and trying to get all the different voices that you get at a liberal arts college into the conversation.” Cusack said.
Chief Technology Officer and co-chair of the AI Coordinating Team Janet Scannell explained that “AI Curiosity” is important to consider when approaching such a rapidly changing technology at Carleton.
“The thing about having a year of [AI] curiosity is we’re not rushing toward any big mandates or campus policies, but we’re working incrementally in a mindset of curiosity,” Scannell said.
She also says that at Carleton, the administration wants to be very careful and cohesive about any policy decisions, but that it is a difficult process.
“It’s very challenging for an institution that likes to be thoughtful and reflective about policies, and where there’s so many individual opinions and who tend not to force policy top-down,” she said. “With something that’s changing that quickly, and with an institution that likes to be thoughtful, it’s very hard to have a common position as an institution.”
Instead of setting overarching or restrictive policies for the entire college, Cusack anticipates faculty will continue to decide what policies are best for their classes.
“I think it’s unlikely that at Carleton we’ll ever have across the board ‘Yes, students are always in all classes allowed to use [AI] this way, and they’re not allowed to use it this way,’” she said. “It’s always going to be each faculty member deciding what makes the most sense for their class.”
According to Scannell, the AI Coordinating Team is currently considering AI’s role at Carleton.
“The AI Coordinating Team is pursuing projects that will help us understand AI and to properly manage ethical considerations,” she said. “For example, we want to know more about the training data that was used for particular GenAI models, and we want to evaluate the environmental impact of AI and the related issue of our collective digital footprint.”
Scannell is also looking towards the future, in which incoming students will have always had access to AI.
“Classmates come in with really different backgrounds, whether it’s writing skills or quantitative reasoning, or how math is taught very differently in different schools across the country,” she said. “Just imagine how diverse the use of AI is gonna be.”
“I don’t know exactly where all of this is gonna go, but I am partly pragmatic about the fact that it is happening,” Scannell said. “It’s partly my responsibility to try to understand it and offer advice where I can, where it’s applicable or how it’s going to affect our students.”