The afternoon activities of the May 29 hybrid event, Emerging Tech Dialogues: Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education, kick off with a keynote address by Clay Shirky. He is currently the New York University Vice Provost for AI and Technology in Education as well as an American writer, consultant, and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies.

"We are in a post-strategy world for adapting our courses to generative AI. After a year and a half, we know what we need to do. We just don't know how to do it. The shared puzzle, for anyone working on adapting tech to teaching and vice-versa is what needs to happen to bring faculty along." said Shirky.

In a July 2023 interview for the Luminary podcast, Shirky linked the impact of generative AI writing tools in the classroom to that of pocket calculators and Wikipedia, then described both short term and long term pedagogy changes that can better help prepare current students for the world into which they will graduate.

Shirky said, "The old model of academic integrity and digital tools was simple -- spell-checking good, copying from Wikipedia bad. The problem we have now is that every point along the spectrum between those uses is now filled in, leaving us with no obvious consensus. Now, and possibly from now on, what it means to do academic work with integrity will vary school by school, department by department, and sometimes professor by professor."

Read more details about the May 29 event and volunteer to help in person or online when you register for the hybrid activities.

Image of Clay Shirky courtesy of New York University.