President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 and Provost Francis Doyle III spoke about their vision for navigating education at Brown in the age of artificial intelligence at Tuesday’s faculty meeting.
But some faculty members weren’t happy with their proposed plan.
In her address, Paxson highlighted several priorities for “leading through change,” such as focusing on “human-centered capacities,” emphasizing the Open Curriculum and investing in AI as an “essential tool” for teaching and research, according to a slide shown at the meeting.
Now that AI has become more prevalent in K-12 education, Paxson also noted that the University should prepare for incoming students who may have varied skills in both academics and AI use. She emphasized the importance of getting “back to basics” when teaching students in the age of AI.
At the meeting, Doyle announced a new AI portal, created by his team and the Office of University Communications, intended to serve Brown’s “internal community.” The portal includes links to news, training and workshops related to AI.
He also highlighted two faculty members who have responded to the prevalence of AI through their research and teaching methods.
Michael Satlow, a professor of Judaic and religious studies, shared how he has used AI to extract over 350,000 statements from the Aramaic and Hebrew Talmuds.
Satlow said the undertaking would have been impossible without the use of AI. He now plans on using “traditional” humanities research methods to investigate how knowledge moves through time.
Jeffrey Moser, an associate professor and chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture, explained that his department has responded to AI in the classroom in several ways. These included meeting with students one-on-one after writing assignments, providing course readers — printed resources that include compiled course documents — and communicating in person instead of through Canvas.
Moser noted that these changes have mostly taken place in small seminars and called on senior administrators to focus on “scalability,” so that these solutions can be applied to larger classes. For example, his department does not currently have the resources to print large numbers of course readers.
None of these policies are being implemented uniformly across his department and are instead left up to the discretion of individual faculty members, he said. But “almost every faculty in the department has implemented strict restrictions,” Moser added.
After the presentation was over, many faculty members expressed concerns about University administrators’ emphasis on AI use.
Seth Rockman, a professor of history, had concerns about administrators’ investment in AI when they have expressed how its impacts are unknown. “You’re selling it really hard,” he said. “You’re selling it so hard that it actually doesn’t seem like something that sells itself.”
He emphasized that he believes that the University’s agenda should not be focused on training workers, but rather on “questions of knowledge and humanity.”
Neil Safier, an associate professor of history, added that he would like to see a “risk assessment” about pursuing different approaches to AI.
Assistant Professor of Engineering Monica Martinez Wilhelmus shared that she initially felt very “negative” about the use of AI in the classroom coming into the semester, but has found it helpful in teaching large classes.
Nancy Khalek, an associate professor of religious studies and history, expressed agreement with Rockman’s statements and cautioned that the University should not “jump the gun” on AI. She encouraged having conversations about how Brown can take advantage of AI before discussing how to “remake” the University in the context of AI. “Brown is bigger than AI,” she added.
Seyla Fernandez is a senior staff writer covering faculty.
