Amid concerns about artificial intelligence-based cheating and the loss of critical thinking, professors are navigating the advantages and pitfalls of AI in the classroom.

At the University of Michigan, computer science and engineering faculty have the double challenge of learning how to use AI tools as they come out while also teaching best practices to their students. That learning curve is increasingly shaped by cloud-based AI platforms that move at commercial speed, bringing enterprise tools directly into academic settings. The focus is on using AI to enhance intelligence, not replace it, according to Ang Chen (pictured, right), associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan.

“It’s important for students to learn AI as a tool for learning and for using AI as a brainstorming partner,” he said. “But I think it’s also important for students to develop critical thinking in asking the right questions. It’s much more important to be thinking independently. I think using AI as a tool instead of relying on it too much to replace our thinking is important for the students and for ourselves.”

Chen; David Jurgens (second from left), associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan; and Gregg Latterman (second from right), executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurship, spoke with Savannah Peterson (left) for the “Google Cloud: Passport to Containers” interview series, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio.

The conversation was recorded on the University of Michigan campus at one of Google’s Ann Arbor offices, underscoring how closely academic research and cloud platforms are now intertwined. They discussed how universities are adopting AI into the classroom and in what ways machine learning is shaping the job market for recent graduates. (* Disclosure below.)

Determining AI’s role in education

When it comes to AI, professors may, in some cases, be less comfortable with using it than their students. On the other hand, older adopters of tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini models bring a knowledge and context that allows them to discern where AI is falling short.

“You have to immerse yourself in it and utilize what you can to make yourself more efficient,” Latterman said. “As somebody that’s not super tech-forward, I actually have to maybe spend a little more of an investment. We really need to make sure we’re cutting edge. We’ve got a whole research series we’re doing as well with entrepreneurship professors around the world that are showing us what they’re doing with AI.”

The Zell Lurie Institute recently introduced Zellbot, an AI tool for helping entrepreneurship students with the ideation stage. Built in collaboration with Google and powered by Gemini, the tool reflects how cloud-native AI can be rapidly prototyped and deployed inside a university environment. It asks students a series of questions about their interests and what problems they want to solve to determine a potential market fit, pushing them to combine human judgment with machine-generated insight rather than treating AI as a one-click answer engine.

Nonetheless, Michigan’s professors emphasize the need for students to put in the time and effort to critically understand their classroom work. Jurgens terms it the “slog.”

“The slog of trying to do really hard things that you’re kind of struggling through, there’s so much that you can gain there,” he said. “Then once you know that, seeing how to augment those really hard-earned skills. But … using it as an assistant to augment your skills, that itself is a skill that we have to learn.”

In that sense, cloud platforms such as Google Cloud are less about outsourcing thinking and more about compressing the time it takes to explore, test and iterate ideas — a shift that mirrors how AI is used in modern enterprises.

Implications beyond the classroom

When teaching students to employ AI in their profession, one question naturally arises: What does that mean for the job market they graduate into? AI is rapidly transforming the job market, for better or for worse, so students need to be prepared.

“[It’s] knowing how to make sure that, why would they hire this student and not just replace them with AI,” Jurgens said. “Like what are you bringing to the table, and then make sure you can have that skillset. ‘I’m more than just me; I’m me and the whole team, whatever that team looks like,’ and making sure they can present themselves to whatever the market is.”

Since AI affects a wide range of industries, the impact can be difficult to predict. Latterman expects to see more people building companies than ever before by harnessing AI tools, especially as cloud platforms lower the barrier to turning ideas into working prototypes in weeks rather than months. Chen, meanwhile, raises ethical concerns that could arise from AI systems capable of mimicking a therapist, a friend or a partner.

“AI can hold a real conversation with people now,” Chen said. “Ways of using AI as a conversation partner are also evolving. I think it’s important for us to think about how we should treat it as a tool, as an automation tool rather than a real person, and what are the ethical implications of the conversations that we have with AI and so forth.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the “Google Cloud: Passport to Containers” interview series:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Google Cloud: Passport to Containers” interview series. Neither Google Cloud, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE