Opinion: Create an AI course, Massey!

Despite the fear that AI will one day take over our jobs, Universities – including Massey – should be including AI class in our studies, rather than penalising us for using it.  

Massey provost Giselle Byrnes tells me, “While we encourage and embrace the use of technology, it is important to ensure these resources are used ethically, responsibly and in accordance with assessment instructions.” Granted, using ChatGPT to write an essay feels like a cop-out and raises plagiarism issues, but there’s no reason why AI shouldn’t be a core topic for many courses. 

As a content producer, I write about basically everything, from mortgages to electric vehicles, Wi-Fi to microwaves, which truthfully can be a tad mind-numbing at times. So, when my company decided to trial ChatGPT, it almost seemed too good to be true, I could write a story in half the time it would typically take me. That’s not to say there haven’t been challenges. ChatGPT is like a male Sagittarius – it just loves to gaslight you.  

I’ve experienced ChatGPT making up information, once even citing a survey that my boss had supposedly written (spoiler alert, he hadn’t, it didn’t exist). But it's good for filler information. ChatGPT writes great articles on anything that doesn’t require too much factual information.  

Byrnes said the university is continually discussing developments in the AI space and considering what this means for teaching. But an AI class doesn’t seem on the cards. “The breadth of AI tools and the diversity of their applications means that an AI class would be too generic to be meaningful for any one specific context.” 

AI is here to stay, so our university should teach us how to work with it rather than fight against it.