ROUNDTABLE REVIEW
to be delegated AI that we train. That’s going to take a lot of time and investment. But then it can be extremely useful in providing formative feedback on a regular basis.” How can we regulate new technology without limiting its potential benefits? Do business schools need specific policies on appropriate use? Mark van der Veen “I think we can easily agree on the general principles, but the details are more difficult and we should claim time for experimentation. We should also look at how other industries, as well as other universities, have used AI or related technologies.” Javier Yanez-Arenas “There are for-profit companies that are reacting immediately and have the entrepreneurial mindset to say, ‘we’ll try it and we’ll make a lot of mistakes, but we’ll learn from those mistakes and we’ll move forward’. But that’s not the situation [in higher education], particularly in research-intensive universities. We want to have everything solved and be sure before we make a policy. “However, it also seems to me that we are moving towards having too many regulations. We need someone to tell us what to do and what not to do. But I believe that part of our responsibility is being responsible and accountable – and knowing the values that we defend. Tools will keep evolving and changing and, regardless of the specific tool, we must be responsible and, as I have said, accountable for how they are used.” Oksana Gerwe “The EU has already come out with a set of principles for AI. Everyone is working on these, so it’s not a question of whether it’s feasible – it will be done and will be needed for higher education.” Donald Lancaster “The key point here is when we use the word ‘principle’ rather than ‘policy’. If it’s about values, ethics and the environment that we want for the future, then principles make sense. However, if we try and make these into a policy for a specific product or use, we might find that they will be dead in the water.”
CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK
Studiosity’s mission is to increase the life chances and wellbeing of students everywhere. It does this by working with university partners to provide students with personal, routine and formative feedback right at the point of need, such as those 10pm study moments where students need a confidence boost to check they are on the right track, helping to develop their capacity for higher-order thinking skills that are critical for success in higher education
normally do. It isn’t plagiarism.’ That might be the same with ChatGPT, in that ideas about where one should and shouldn’t use it will vary with different cultural backgrounds.”
Diana Limburg “We are in classrooms with lots of different people and
backgrounds, so finding out how those people make decisions and what they consider to be morally acceptable is fundamental and that includes decisions around AI.” Mark van der Veen “If we start using more oral presentations and debating as assessment methods because writing assessments become too easy, it may become more difficult for non-native English speakers, for example, and we will have to be aware of this.”
Will AI ever be able to write faculty research papers or student research reports from scratch?
Oksana Gerwe “What generative AI could easily do is go back to the end of any of our papers that list future research directions and ask very specific and precise questions that merit further investigation. By authoring based on our inspiration, this would be human-originated research undertaken by AI.” Ronan Carbery “You need to be held accountable for the research that you produce and AI can’t be held accountable for that.” Mark van der Veen “ChatGPT is not doing research, it’s writing a text. AI can generate a photo album from your ‘holiday’ in Seville, but it can’t give you the experience of being there. Students can give us reports as if they had been doing research, but they would be missing out on fundamental skills in reporting on what they learned and what the questions and discussions were.”
[At the start of July, the UK’s 24 Russell Group universities agreed on a set of guiding principles aimed at ensuring that students and staff are AI-literate]
How can we factor in cultural differences to our thinking on assessment and what might constitute cheating in our programmes? Sir Eric Thomas “What is understood to be plagiarism is one of the real challenges. People from different cultural backgrounds often have entirely different views. For example, some might say: ‘This is just sharing knowledge. I took his or her essay and that’s what we would
Ambition JULY/AUGUST 2023 | 19
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