AI: Familiar Territory or Alien World?
A Q&A with Mark Frydenberg
Sometimes we feel right at home with AI; sometimes it seems like an alien world. (Image generated with AI; ChatGPT 4o.)
We've been here before. Each of us with a higher education career has lived through at least one, and possibly several periods when educators had to sort out how to move forward during the onset of disruptive technology: Google, social media in its many forms, Wikipedia, and others — even the hand-held calculator!
But now we have AI. Generative AI is different, if in no other way, by the sheer speed with which it has crept into almost every crevice in the ways we learn, work, and live. How can higher education keep up with, or preferably, stay ahead of the significant changes that come with AI? Can we still stay on familiar ground while AI makes some of us feel like we're in an alien world?
Mark Frydenberg is a distinguished lecturer of Computer Information Systems at Bentley University and founding director of Bentley's CIS Learning and Technology Sandbox. As a frequently featured speaker and widely published author he's explored virtually every aspect of new and emerging technologies for teaching and learning. Here, CT talks with Frydenberg to hear his latest thinking and practical advice on teaching with AI and surviving our latest and perhaps greatest disruption.
Mary Grush: Is there any one historical moment you've seen with technology change that is closest to the scale and nature of disruption we're seeing now with AI?
Mark Frydenberg: I remember teaching an introductory information technology course at Bentley where students used pocket PCs to access their e-mail, keep their calendars, and surf the web. That was back in 2004, and there were no iPhones. Facebook and other social media were in their infancy. Search engines were around and popular, albeit much more limited in functionality than what we have today.
Grush: What was the biggest disruption during that time?
Frydenberg: Well, prior to that time you always had to go to your computer to access e-mail, calendars, and the Internet. But finally in 2004 my students could use those resources anywhere that they could find wireless Internet access. I remember thinking that this was a game changer for education, as my students could access the world's information from a device they kept in their pockets. And of course, a few years later Apple introduced the iPhone and pretty much everyone was doing it.
Grush: So, is that scenario relatable to what we have now with AI?
Frydenberg: What we're seeing with generative AI is different. It's one thing to be able to look up information online; it's another to have AI generate knowledge by interpreting that information for you.
What we're seeing with generative AI is different. It's one thing to be able to look up information online; it's another to have AI generate knowledge by interpreting that information for you.
Grush: It sounds like now, with AI, we're talking about more than widespread access: At the same time that we have mobile access, the services that our students access are possibly several orders of magnitude more advanced than previous technologies.
Frydenberg: You could say that.
Grush: Still, are the issues surrounding AI today similar to your historical example?
Frydenberg: Many of the issues are the same — just the technologies are different.
Grush: So, continuing with your example from the past, what was the response to those issues?
Frydenberg: As the Internet became much more mainstream, educators focused on teaching digital literacy skills — how to use online resources effectively and responsibly, how to determine the reliability of information found online, as well as how the information we provide will be used or kept private.