The pace of AI is accelerating, and it’s a bit exhausting.
Last spring I wrote a blog post titled, I Am a Prompt Engineer. I was so proud to have completed an 18-module online course to build my prompting skills for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Just three months later, OpenAI launched ChatGPT-4 Omni with conversational prompting. Now I start many of my ChatGPT sessions with, “Please refine the following prompt to maximize your response to…” and my original single-sentence prompt comes back to me as a fully flushed-out three- to four-sentence beauty that is far beyond anything I could have crafted on my own. It writes my prompts for me! Just like that, I’m obsolete and my career as a prompt engineer has ended. Additionally, the conversational power of GPT-4o is pretty incredible. I’ve had multiple 10- to 20-minute conversations with it to gain insight or explore issues and situations in ways that expand my thought processes beyond what I could do if I were to continue talking to myself while thinking things through.
I don’t consider myself “Pro-AI.” Rather, I consider myself “productively paranoid.” AI is happening, and it’s happening so fast that it sometimes makes my head spin. I have fun creating images for presentations, but the pace of development coupled with the scale and variety of uses can be overwhelming. This complexity and pace are why I wanted Todd McLees to join us at the College’s Fall Opening. I think his message — embracing AI to advance human flourishing — is important in these early stages, as it encourages us to create more positive-use cases that will hopefully outnumber the inevitable negative ones. I’ve seen multiple articles about the Manhattan Project costing $23B in current dollars and its creators forming an advisory board to create guardrails minimizing the technology’s potential dangers. In contrast, companies are currently spending $230B (10 times that amount!) on AI, with no advisory board or guardrails whatsoever.
We may not be able to influence what the “Big Tech” companies are doing with AI — they are unleashing it into the wild, and its impact is inevitable, whether we want it or not. If we simply ignore AI or fail to develop good habits with it, we run the risk of succumbing to its downsides, much like how social media’s downsides have negatively influenced society. I suppose that can be an individual choice; however, if we collectively ignore AI, MVCC might struggle to remain relevant. Relevancy is what is driving the paranoia I feel, and I’m trying to use that feeling productively by personally engaging with AI.
Recently, the College Senate and Cabinet collaborated to create and launch an AI task force to develop recommendations for a Board Policy on AI at the request of the MVCC Board of Trustees. We’ll also have a small group participate in a 30-Day Challenge led by Todd McLees to develop useful AI habits through daily engagements over 30 days. These actions are all in an effort to stay connected to the blinding pace of inevitable change that now includes SUNY adding artificial intelligence as a requirement under the information literacy core competency of the general education degree requirements.
I appreciate the innovators and early adopters who are engaging with AI and working to guide and support their peers with what they’re learning. I also value the perspectives of the cautious and concerned among us. I share many of their sentiments and believe it is important to include these voices as we look to find our way through this wave of intense change. However, avoiding AI now would be like avoiding the internet in the 1990s. In my opinion, one of the things that makes MVCC special is the constructive sharing of perspectives on complex and disruptive issues. Rather than avoid the hard stuff, I believe MVCC does an amazing job of engaging in meaningful conversations to understand the forces of change and find ways to adapt and evolve our programs, services, and operations to remain relevant. AI may be our greatest challenge yet, but I’m confident we can figure it out together.
*Note: Not a single word of this post was generated by AI. I claim every word in this post as my own.
If you have any questions or comments on this post, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu
