Finding your guide

An assignment from the course How AI is Changing Higher Education

This is material related to my teaching about AI. For more, see AI Log teaches.

A Guide to Finding Your Guide

At the end of More Than Words, John Warner says that the “speed and pace with which the technology is evolving” makes it “virtually impossible to stay on top” of all that is happening in AI. His advice is to "Find your guides" (see page 270), which inspired this assignment.

Your first major task in How AI is Changing Education is to identify and engage critically with a writer whose ideas about AI and higher education you find interesting and useful. After you choose your guide, you will write Short Essay #2, and then give an informal talk in class. To add a layer of complexity and fun, we will experiment with JeepyTA as an educational tool for this assignment, discussing its use as a feedback tool in class on September 22 and 29.

• The essay is due on September 21.

• The in-class presentation is planned for September 22.

• To prepare for our in-class discussion, you should create a packet for small group activities.

  1. Print a blog post or short essay by your guide. Choose your favorite or a good example of what makes them interesting.

  2. Print a copy of your short essay.

  3. Print a copy of JeepyTA’s feedback about your draft essay.

  4. Make four copies of that packet and bring them with you to class on September 22.

For more details, review each assignment in Canvas.

Choosing your guide

Because this course is about the relation between AI and higher education, I want you to choose a writer who is in some way engaged with the academy. That is, they should be associated with an institution of higher education or write explicitly about higher education. That rules out industry insiders like Sam Altman or Dario Amodei and tech journalists like Kara Swisher or Nilay Patel who write about AI but not explicitly about higher ed.

To help you get started, below is a list of some of my guides and what I think of as their academic discipline. Use an internet search with the writer’s name + AI. Feel free to watch videos or listen to podcasts featuring your writer, but remember the assignment requires you to identify an essay or article by the writer.

I would be delighted to help you make your choice or talk with you about the process. Make an appointment!

• Danielle Allen (Philosophy, Political Science)

• Alicia Bankhofer (Modern Languages; International Education)

• Emily Bender (Linguistics)

• Ruha Benjamin (Political Science)

• Josh Brake (Science, Technology & Society)

• Ben Breen (History)

• Joi Buolamwini (Science, Technology & Society)

• Ted Chiang (Business, Writing)

• Brad DeLong (Economics, History)

• Henry Farrell (Political Science)

• Alison Gopnick (Psychology)

• Jason Gulya (English)

• Alex Hannah (Sociology)

• Dave Karpf (Communication)

• Shreeharsh Kelkar (Data Science, Science, Technology & Society)

• Sasha Luccioni (Environmental Studies)

• Anna Mills (English)

• Melanie Mitchell (Science, Technology & Society)

• Ethan Mollick (Management, Education)

• Kevin Munger–(Social Science, Data Science)

• Chad Orzel (Physics)

• Ben Riley (Cognitive Science, Philosophy)

• Hollis Robbins (English)

• Jane Rosenzweig (English, Writing)

• Eryk Salvaggio (Art History, Visual Studies)

• Cosma Shalizi (Statistics, Data Science)

• Marc Watkins (English)

• Audrey Watters (History)

• Ben Williamson (Data Science, Education)

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