AI is a field full of misconceptions, with many afraid to use it – but expert Andrew Bartlett tells the AJP Podcast how it’s being used to help learning and simulate patient interactions

“There is still a lot of people who are scared of AI,” says Andrew Bartlett, academic at the University of Sydney’s School of Pharmacy, and PhD candidate.

“Students are afraid to use it. They think they’’re going to get caught cheating.”

But “The way that university, particularly the University of Sydney works now, is that we have assessments to help learning and we have assessments of learning and AI is allowed in those assessments where it’s helping learning.

“I think there’s a misconception [that] whatever you put in is private and I don’t think it is. And so I think there’s some serious concerns that people need to take into consideration about what they put into AI.”

Bartlett has been having his students help him develop AI agents – “it’s a bit of a class project”.

“I have a pharmacy management tutor and we use it in the class, so I’ll give them a topic, say we’re talking about the pharmacy employment landscape in different areas of Australia.

“I might give each little table group a prompt and they put it into the agent and then collectively they’ve got to come up with a three minute presentation that they’ve got to teach back the class.

“So they quite like doing that. It means that there’s almost like an extra one of me accessible when they need it.

“When it comes to exam preparation as well, it’s got all my teaching resources in there, they can ask it questions, I can train it to behave a bit like I would in the way that it asks questions.

“So I’m accessible 24 hours, but I still get to sleep.”

Highlights include:

01:12 – Bartlett’s background in pharmacy, and how he became interested in AI

02:18 – “I was seeing them use AI in classrooms and I was seeing that they were using it really badly.”

03:24 – AI misconceptions

04:37 – How students respond to the AI agents

06:48 – AI for patient counselling scenarios

08:50 – The key benefits of simulated patient interactions

09:39 – How to minimise mistakes

11:16 – “AI can be quite good at stepping someone through a reflective process.”

13:02 – Bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world pharmacy skills

14:29 – How could AI change a pharmacist’s day-to-day role?

15:56 – “It’s interesting looking at the biases that come through.”

19:24 – What skills do pharmacists need in an AI-driven future?

21:35 – Getting up to speed

22:36 – The next frontier

25:17 – Embracing AI in business

You can access the full transcript of this podcast here. While we endeavour to ensure all important words and phrases are correct, please note there may be some minor inaccuracies in the transcription.

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