AI in Academia: Navigating the Future Professor Noah Giansiracusa and Gaurav Shah

Lindsey Kosinski, Associate Director of Business Intelligence at Bentley University and a student of Bentley’s Masters in Analytics program, discusses her journey of upskilling before and after the release of ChatGPT, how students can leverage tools like it to learn more effectively in a dynamic environment, the skills that remain crucial as generative AI proliferates, and the evolution of business intelligence from the early days of big data to today.

Janelle Estes and Sarah Pagliaccio, lecturers in Experience Design at Bentley University, join us to discuss the role of AI in user research and design. Topics include strategies and approaches for teaching with AI in the classroom, how gen AI can be considered as a junior intern for UX professionals, how it can help make room for higher order learning and thinking, how we can probe to reduce hallucinations, and the role of AI in designing with empathy.

Jennifer Xu, professor of Computer Information Systems at Bentley University, discusses how to teach AI to business students, the intellectual value of learning coding, the data needs of AI versus human brains, and why curiosity and empathy are paramount as we prepare for jobs of the future.

Fred Ledley, professor of Natural & Applied Sciences at Bentley University, discusses how today's AI grew out of the big data methods of computational biology from the past few decades, how AI is changing the way science is taught and researched, how it's paving the way for personalized medicine, what scientific research papers might look like in the future, and what chatbots do better than web search and what web search still offers that chatbots need to improve on.

Chris Beneke, professor of history at Bentley University, discusses how Bentley's university-wide first year seminar class dealt with AI disruptions, what teaching AI and teaching sex ed have in common, how web search is evolving with AI, and how AI is forcing higher ed to confront some challenging questions around its mission and clarify its purpose.

Chase Cicchetti, Lecturer in Finance at Bentley University, discusses what happened when his students created their own class policy on AI, how generative AI sped up his research, how LLMs are poised to impact the finance industry, and what the biggest indicator was that some of his students used ChatGPT to write their essays.