Transformation brought by generative AI will mean better research papers and researchers being judged on science rather than how they write, while bringing a focus in universities on teaching students how to prompt AI, according to a computer scientist who leads the University of Potsdam.

Oliver G¨¹nther, the president of Potsdam and former professor of information systems at Humboldt University Berlin,?recently warned Times Higher Education¡¯s?World Academic Summit, hosted by the University of Sydney, that ¡°many of our colleagues are underestimating how AI is going to change teaching and research and administration¡±.

¡°For research, many people haven¡¯t understood it will change the way we write papers, change the way we distribute our time between doing the actual research and writing it up,¡± Professor G¨¹nther told THE.

¡°It will lead to better papers because many scientists have trouble using the kind of prose that could reach a wide readership.¡±

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

Generative AI, he predicted, will also boost researchers who publish in English but for whom English is not their native language.

¡°I think the advantage of having English as a native language is going to go away ¨C which is good for everybody,¡± said Professor G¨¹nther. ¡°So science is not being judged on how it is written up; that will change.¡±

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

Another speaker at the summit, edX founder Anant Agarwal, told the event that universities were failing to keep pace with the corporate world in appreciating that ¡°prompt engineering¡± ¨C setting guidelines in interactions with AI and ¡°asking questions in a way you get answers you¡¯re looking for¡± ¨C will, in future, be ¡°the single biggest skill everybody has to learn¡±.

Campus resource: Can we spot AI-written content?

Professor G¨¹nther said: ¡°You are basically an educated expert proofreader of the text that comes out of the machine ¨C that¡¯s what we have to teach.¡±

¡°Any faculty that has any kind of responsibility for their students will understand that to teach computer scientists [for example] how to write computer science papers has to be different now than it was two years ago¡± before the advent of generative AI, he continued.

Key questions were now, Professor G¨¹nther said, ¡°how do you prompt the generative AI, not only for the text but also for the diagrams¡­that is what we have to teach, then we have to teach how to judge the first draft of what comes out of the machine¡±.

But the focus should always remain on ¡°what we want to achieve as a university, what we want to teach our students, rather than starting from the technology,¡± he stressed.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

¡®It is just a professional skill,?not a core part of our curriculum¡¯

Graduates¡¯ ability to use generative AI will be a CV bullet point on a par with ¡°can use Microsoft Excel¡± rather than transforming what universities teach, according to a specialist in using AI and digital technology in the classroom.

David Kellermann, senior lecturer in UNSW Sydney¡¯s School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, built a conversational agent, or bot, to assist students as early as 2017 and for his linked use of Teams as a learning platform.

One ¡°knee-jerk reaction¡± to the advent of generative AI, he told Times Higher Education at the recent World Academic Summit, was to argue that universities must now teach students to be ¡°masters of the AI ¨C we have to learn how to drive the AI; because the AI knows everything and can do everything the new disciplinary frontier is prompt engineering."

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

That was, he added, an ¡°excessively optimistic but simultaneously dystopian view. What it does is it forgets the place of human thought: it thinks that a large language model that¡¯s basically trained like a pastiche of the internet is able to replicate it [human thought].¡±

¡°What generative AI actually does is it threatens the mechanism we have used to assess students¡¯ learning,¡± meaning ¡°dramatic impact on remote digital assessment¡± and a shift to in-person assessment, he said.

¡°The real reaction [to AI] we¡¯re going to see is that universities are going to realise or remember what their value proposition is ¨C it is to offer a formative experience,¡± predicted Dr Kellermann.

He continued: ¡°Your competency in using generative AI, or prompt engineering as people are calling it, the place of that particular skill on your r¨¦sum¨¦ will be a bullet point in professional skills, and it will sit there right after ¡®can use Microsoft Excel¡¯.¡±

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

As digital computer-aided design replaced the pencil and drafting board, there are ¡°certain things generative AI will replace,¡± said Dr Kellermann. ¡°But it¡¯s not going to be a core part of our curriculum. It is just a professional skill. Yes, it¡¯s going to be embedded in everything, but I think we are getting carried away in the idea of how it¡¯s going to change that arc of learning that is part of the tradition of universities.¡±

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com