In this episode host Oracle Academy manager Tyra Peirce speaks with Mary Olson Industry Executive Director, Education at Oracle. Tyra and Mary speak about the ethics of AI in education and give practical advice on how to best use the technology while avoiding common pitfalls.

 

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Episode Transcript:

 

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;35;01
Welcome to the Oracle Academy Tech Chat. This podcast provides educators and students in-depth discussions with thought leaders around computer science, cloud technologies and software design to help students on their journey to becoming industry ready technology leaders. Of the Future. Let's get started. Welcome to Oracle Academy TED Chat, where we discuss how Oracle Academy helps prepare our next generation's workforce.
 
00;00;35;03 - 00;01;02;08
I'm your host, Tyra Pierce. In this episode, I'm joined by Mary Olson, executive Director, education at Oracle. Mary and I speak about the ethics of AI in education across multiple fronts administrative, academic and research. A little bit about my guest. For over 30 years, Mary has been using the latest technology to drive innovation and the education system. Welcome, Mary.
 
00;01;02;11 - 00;01;26;07
thanks, Tyra. I'm really happy to be here. So to start off, can you give me a little bit about your background at Oracle? Sure. I can tell you a little bit about that. I actually have a fairly short tenure at Oracle. I was recruited about a little over three years ago to lead the voice of the customer strategy for Oracle from A higher education perspective.
 
00;01;26;09 - 00;01;49;01
And I, I feel like I'm returning to my roots because I spent about 30 years at IBM before coming to Oracle. And my favorite job there was leading our education for North America. So I feel like I'm back home. I know today you're talking about A.I., and so let's kind of get a little bit more into AI. AI's constantly changing.
 
00;01;49;02 - 00;02;12;24
What are some of the ways you've seen AI used in education? well, you know, it is constantly changing and  it's kind of funny because people think about it. You hear about it now a lot and they think it's new. Well, it's not new. It's been around for a really, really long time that the use cases are expanding and they're coming out in exciting new ways.
 
00;02;12;27 - 00;02;40;12
So when I think about how higher education and education in general is using AI, they tend to fall into some buckets. One of the buckets is streamlining the administrative processes and basically the running of the institution because face it, a university era or a school district is a business. They have to hire people, pay people, report their finances, do all kinds of reporting.
 
00;02;40;12 - 00;03;18;05
So there are a number of use cases around changing the way the institution is run. And that's that's probably the most significant use cases right now. They're also moving into research. So we see a lot of cases where researchers are really accelerating their discoveries wildfire research, cancer research, drug discovery, everything by using the generative and the analytical tools, machine learning tools that come with AI.
 
00;03;18;08 - 00;03;42;02
And so that's a really growing area. Another area that's kind of unique and that I'm finding more attention to these days is in providing students with services. So whether it's trying to help them with career guidance, what do they want to do after they graduate? Maybe help them write their resumes and polish those up? We're seeing a lot of applications there.
 
00;03;42;04 - 00;04;14;03
Another area that I think is kind of fun is helping to make it easier to actually teach. So we're developing use cases where they're a teaching assistant or a tutor that can help the professor actually answer questions for students. And there's a lot of applicability there. And probably I think one of the most surprising is it was two weeks ago I was reading in the San Francisco Chronicle and there was an article on how A.I. is disrupting the college admissions process.
 
00;04;14;06 - 00;04;37;11
And there's you know, it's actually kind of a big business to for parents often paying to help their students get into the right colleges with the college application process. And there are a number of startups out there that are saying, hey, don't pay this company a couple thousand dollars to get your students application filled out. Use our generative AI tools for free.
 
00;04;37;13 - 00;05;10;03
And when I looked at that article, I thought, you know, some people are saying you really shouldn't be doing that. But the California University of California has a statement of application integrity when you apply. And they're now actually saying that it is okay to use generative AI in your application process, provided it's used responsibly and ethically. Use it for content editing, for readability to make it, use it as a tool like it was designed to.
 
00;05;10;05 - 00;05;38;16
But they draw the line at actually plagiarism and just using it to write the product. So they say if they come back and they find out that you just used it to write the product, the application, then they will take action on that. That is so interesting for me. It's like when and I wonder, as I'm sure as we're getting out there and further, there are going to be ways to actually measure the tools in terms of like, are you creating a product or are you editing and, and things along those lines?
 
00;05;38;16 - 00;06;01;16
I think that that is just as you were telling me this, I was like, that is really fascinating that they're okay with it and they are disrupting that industry because what's the line of written by the code or written by you? And I'm glad that they're able to kind of to kind of take a look at that, which leads me into my next question.
 
00;06;01;18 - 00;06;26;11
What are your thoughts on faculty using AI in the classroom for teaching and learning? Well, I have some pretty strong opinions on that. So what I really think is that I go back to when calculators first came out and the faculty, a lot of people, a lot of teachers did not want their students using calculators because they thought they wouldn't learn the concepts of math behind that.
 
00;06;26;14 - 00;06;46;03
And so they were banned in a number of classrooms. But then, you know, the more they started to use it, the more they started to innovate with it. They learned how they could use the tool effectively. They could still teach the math concepts, but they could use the calculator to really accelerate the students learning and take some of the drudgery out of it.
 
00;06;46;05 - 00;07;09;11
I think we're going to see I used the same way. And to do that, though, I think if you're a teacher, what you need to do is you really need to understand how A.I. affects the subject you're teaching. So, for example, if you are teaching Python programing, you know you're in computer science, you're teaching Python. How can I help with that?
 
00;07;09;12 - 00;07;37;05
Well, I could just plain flat write the code, which happens in a lot of cases, or it can help maybe with debugging the code. And so if I were teaching Python, what I would do is I would have my students write their code, debug it, experienced the pain and agony of debugging it, and then run it through the generative tool to bring the original set of code through it to see how it debugs it and how much more effective that is.
 
00;07;37;08 - 00;07;58;11
And I would do that and make sure that I also included some failures. So I think it's important for them to know that just because generative AI may be writes the Python code, it doesn't mean it's perfect. You are still responsible, you still have to check it. And so I would be sure that there are some failures and ways that they can spot that.
 
00;07;58;13 - 00;08;28;24
And to do that, you know, just my advice to to instructors is experiment. Experiment with your own use cases. Have a couple of thoughts. I think of like I think of like my background is in is in writing and I think of, you know, a lot of times today especially I had a friend a few years ago that was an English professor at a community college, and she would talk about getting papers in where people are writing with emojis or writing with like text slang.
 
00;08;28;24 - 00;08;50;16
And so I think that this will help immensely. So, I mean, if you're not going in and plagiarizing, you're actually giving input there to see how writing should be done appropriately as opposed to not giving out what the saying L.O.L or TGIF or what have you. I think that that will help so they can kind of see what a structure supposed to look like.
 
00;08;50;19 - 00;09;14;24
The other thing that I think about with what you just mentioned is when I'm writing a Python code or a Java code or a database code, you're going to be if the AI is programed correctly, the app is learning correctly, you're going to avoid some of the pitfalls of security. Like I always think of sql injectors. I remember many years ago talking to some Oracle database expert about SQL injectors and learning how to code more securely.
 
00;09;14;26 - 00;09;36;14
And I think that this will kind of alleviate some of those and address those concerns as you're writing that code that it's automatically going to be coding more securely. Yes, it can definitely do that. And when you were talking about that, that also reminds me it can either of a professor w