Dr. William Wei [00:00:00] I think at the moment, A.I. Will be very helpful in disseminating knowledge, but may not be very helpful for creating knowledge. That is university’s major function in a society. We’re creating knowledge, not only disseminating knowledge.
Patricia [00:00:32] Welcome to another episode of The AI Purity Podcast, the show where we explore the intersection of artificial intelligence and the pursuit of truth. I’m your host, Patricia, and today we have a distinguished guest joining us, someone whose global perspective and wealth of experience in academia make him a fascinating voice in the conversation about the role of A.I. in education. Dr. William X. Wei Is not just a professor and university administrator. He’s a trailblazer who has left his mark on the higher education landscape across three continents and four countries. With a strong foundation in international economics and management, Dr. Wei brings a unique perspective to the table. At Algoma University, he has played a pivotal role in shaping the academic journey of students and navigating the evolving landscape of higher education. His skills in instructional design, facilitation and fundraising have made him a sought after expert in the field. Today, we’re diving into a crucial conversation about the implications of A.I. on academia, and we’ll be exploring the transformative potential of A.I. in education, discussing ethical considerations and gaining insights from Dr. Wei’s experiences and observations. Before we delve into the discussion, a quick reminder to our listeners If you enjoy our episodes, please subscribe, leave a review, and share your thoughts on social media. Now, let’s jump into the conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. William Wei. Thank you.
Dr. William Wei [00:01:52] Thank you for the nice introduction. I’m very delighted to join you on this opportunity. Thank you.
Patricia [00:01:59] We’re so happy that you’re here. How are you doing today?
Dr. William Wei [00:02:03] Yeah, very good. A lot of meetings online. Seriously speaking.
Patricia [00:02:06] That’s great. We really appreciate your time. From the whole team at AI Purity, we appreciate you coming on our platform. You know, at AI Purity, our services and to our core, we really wanted to place ourselves at the forefront of upholding academic integrity, which is why we created an AI detection – An AI text detection tool. And, you know, we feel like we have a social responsibility to advocate the ethical and responsible use of AI. So that’s why we wanted to speak with educators, to hear their side and share their insights as to how we can all move forward in this new world where the use of artificial intelligence is becoming the new norm.
Dr. William Wei [00:02:46] Yeah, I received an email talking about some of the exams of students using Chat GPT for, you know, getting answers. You know, those online exams are very critical. Yeah. Thank you.
Patricia [00:02:58] Absolutely. So before we start talking about artificial intelligence, can you share your journey and experiences in the field of international economics and management that led you to your current position at Algoma University?
Dr. William Wei [00:03:11] Sure. I just joined Algoma last year from Vancouver, and also I spent some time in Alberta with MacEwan University and the Marquette University in Vancouver. So for the past 15 years, I’ve been a university administrator, department chair, professor, and also in different roles as director of Research Institute. And previously, I did my Ph.D. and also Master’s in Germany and Ireland, so quite a few different places I went with different universities and different continents. And this new challenge of artificial intelligence in post-secondary is quite a new experience for me. Thank you.
Patricia [00:03:55] Wow. And you’ve probably dealt with a lot of students throughout your career. And given that extensive experience, how have you seen the landscape of higher education evolve throughout the years?
Dr. William Wei [00:04:05] Yes. Previously, you know, I still remember one time I study in Germany. We use a lot of PowerPoint projectors, and we use a lot of, you know at that time are the ones technology, including emails, you know, online tools. But today, you can easily work remotely. You can attend classes, you know, virtually either as a hybrid or in person. And you can also attend your exam, you know, you know, using virtual tools. So this is a big revolutionary change in universities, citing particularly in post-secondary. How you evaluate your students. Yeah.
Patricia [00:04:48] Absolutely. And I think that was like further exacerbated. You know, during the pandemic, there was no really a choice. We had to adapt. And now I feel like, you know, the technology has been like really extensive and it’s just started to boom in this way. In your opinion, what role does A.I. Play in shaping the future of academia, especially in terms of like teaching and research?
Dr. William Wei [00:05:10] I think there are several differences when you’re talking about A.I. And its application for post-secondary. Basically, that affects everybody in the university sector, from professors, faculty members, you know, those are full time sessional members, from the people, from the industry, from the student side and also staff side. And I think for a larger research comprehensive university in Canada and across the world, there’s a lot of discussion on how to use the technology to advance, you know, the topic, the discipline in terms of delivery. But for a teaching oriented university like ours is more on academic integrity, academic dishonesty of how we can prevent using those artificial intelligence. You know, in the positive, like prevent it using negatively, but promote it using a positive way. Thank you.
Patricia [00:06:09] Absolutely. That’s also what we’re trying to pioneer exactly here at AI Purity, teaching people to be socially responsible of using artificial intelligence, because I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon, to be honest. But [00:06:20]on the flip side, as a university administrator, how do you see A.I. Impacting the administrative processes in higher education institutions? [7.4s]
Dr. William Wei [00:06:29] [00:06:29]Yes. From the administrator side, obviously we receive more, you know, concerns from the faculty members, you know, and also the board of borderline of using technology, particularly A.I. functions. You know, sizing assignment in looking at how to conduct the exams, how to proctor the exams and how to evaluate their teaching effectiveness. For example, a lot of times students that meet their assignment, they may not want to tell you that it’s actually using or assisted by the A.I. tools to finish those assignments. So you have to be very prudent with those kind of, you know, potential risk by assessing student’s assignment. Absolutely. [44.9s]
Patricia [00:07:17] In your classrooms, I’m not sure if A.I. has been integrated into classrooms. I know we know that students are using it on their own voluntarily. But how do you see A.I. in education and student learning experiences in in your observation?
Dr. William Wei [00:07:31] I think from the students’ perspective, obviously they have multiple ways of using and implementing in universities in terms of the A.I. tools and also, you know, make their assignments and exam more successful, you know, in terms of getting a better grade. But from those kind of angle, it’s not only the artificial intelligence as assistant in their learning, but also how we prevent loss in our misconduct happening. So from our perspective, we want actually more A.I. assistant tool being used during the study period, and not only just for the exams, but throughout the, you know, the semester. Well, I think we will encourage students to explore the ways of how we can help them, but we want to restrict some of the use of those technology while we have official exams and also when they’re submitting their assignments. So there is always a boundary line we have to really look at.
Patricia [00:08:36] Thank you for that. If you if there are actually any like initiatives or projects at Algoma University where A.I. has been implemented into the school or like in classrooms, could you share about those – could you highlight those special initiatives if you have any? And do you think it enhances the educational outcomes?
Dr. William Wei [00:08:54] Yes, I think, you know, at Algoma, we have a special committee looking at the technology use in classrooms, particularly the sizing of students’ grades. And we also have people leading together from different faculties looking at the teaching and learning piece of using artificial intelligence. And I think we’re also drafting our very first policy on that. And it’s not coming out yet, but we are looking at a direction in policy in terms of process or procedure on how we identify the contradicting and also challenging piece of using A.I. Not only in the regular class activity, but obviously looking at the long term strategy of using it in the academic field.
Patricia [00:09:45] Absolutely. And speaking about challenges, [00:09:47]in the context of A.I. and education, what ethical considerations and challenges do you believe are most critical to address? [6.7s]
Dr. William Wei [00:09:55] [00:09:55]One of the big challenges I found interesting is the how you write your articles and also the traditional way of referencing different sources. For example, today, if you’re using highly advanced Chat GPT first version, you can actually put into a picture or image and then ask Chat GPT to try to write an article for you. And those kind of interesting results coming from using artificial intelligence is very, you know, in a way that’s shocking and also effective, and it will be very useful for professionals such as copy editor or as such as professional writers. But how you allow students using those kind of technology, and most of the time, you have to pay using some part of the technology is a question mark to us. So in terms of the impact into the daily teaching activity, into the daily learning experience is pretty critical because students can get artificial intelligence as a very effective tool in their study and learning experience. Our whole faculty member, professors, you know, jumping into that role, compared to the traditional way of delivering the lecture is very challenging. So you need actually new faculty member to be trained to understanding all the abilities of those kind of applications, and at the same time, looking at – looking at how to integrate those applications into your daily teaching activity. [96.3s]
Patricia [00:11:32] Thank you, and we’re talking about the downsides of A.I. here and the use of it among students, but how do you think can A.I. Be leveraged to address these challenges of internalization in higher education?
Dr. William Wei [00:11:46] I think there’s a lot of positive sides of using A.I. For example, it delivers things fast and normally can give you a very general comprehensive idea. But [00:11:59]one of the interesting dimensions of which A.I. cannot replace human being is that although in several different sectors, such as health, such as education, such as accounting and finance, it was widely used today in the industry. But one thing on the innovative side of the, you know, the human ability can now be really placed by an A.I. And the other issue of artificial intelligence is that they basically produce things based on, you know, a lot of collection of the historical data. And some of those data may not be 100% true. If you ask Chat GPT a question, which actually hasn’t happened yet, and they may give you an answer, but based on who and where they find is online. But those cannot be realistic answers because a lot of those kind of questions may not be happening yet, but A.I. can produce an answer for you based on their database and what they collected. But I think the judgment of human beings, whether these are real or unreal or whether this is a misinformation or whether this is a disinformation is very critical, and that cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence. [77.8s]
Patricia [00:13:19] That’s actually perfect for the next question, because like you said, sometimes Chat GPT or these other large language model chat bots aren’t always generating accurate answers. [00:13:29]What are your thoughts on the potential biases and ethical concerns associated with A.I. algorithms in educational settings? [7.1s]
Dr. William Wei [00:13:38] [00:13:38] Yes, I would say the very first challenge is on cross-cultural learning. For example, if you are in an English platform, you probably have a set of questions put on to the A.I. and they give you a set of answers, which is basically going to an English audience and primarily those people using English as a working language. But if you’re going to other different languages, maybe Arabic, maybe Asian languages, and you might have the same question, you may have a different size of answers based on the cultural differences. So those kind of interesting differences, I don’t think artificial intelligence have a sensitive way of detecting it. And also, you know, in a way that artificial intelligence kind of really, you know, to analysis those kind of difference, to find the common rules for those kind of answers and also the major differences of laws and the answers and only the differences – the diverse differences of answers, I say create more opportunities over there. I don’t think artificial intelligence and really detect that. You know, for example, if you say “yes” in different cultures, these can be different things, even when you nod your head in different cultures can also be in different things. There’s a cultural implications, and I, I don’t think the machine can really, you know, detect that at this moment. [83.3s]
Patricia [00:15:02s] I totally agree. And with those challenges, from your perspective, how can universities strike a balance between embracing A.I. technologies and maintaining the human touch in education?
Dr. William Wei [00:15:15] Yes, I think there are several ways. Maybe in our foundation courses. I’m not sure how far primary school and middle school are using A.I. today, but I suppose students are very familiar with those kind of tools. I would say maybe in our foundation course, first years and second years, we can wildly use those kind of tools, but when students reach into the third and fourth year, particularly going to some of the capstone courses, going to the real applied work, they can refrain from using technology and going back to the traditional model a little bit. And otherwise, we can also use a hybrid way of doing it. Some of the courses, for example, in accounting and finance, you probably want to use a lot of A.I. tools, because the industries are actually calling for that. But in communication, you know, in other courses in the international business, maybe you don’t really want to use a lot of artificial intelligence, and it all depends on the discipline and also the field of the study. And I think we do need a kind of holistic picture to look at our curriculum mapping and how far each of the course, each of the discipline, each of the subject can be integrated with A.I. tool. And when is the best way of integrating it? Either from the very beginning of the course or until, you know, student reaching the higher level of the courses, but I do believe you need a strategy to combine all those kind of possibilities.
Patricia [00:16:51] That’s a really great insight. And speaking about like being specific about which disciplines can integrate A.I., as a researcher, have you explored any specific areas where A.I. has significantly contributed to advancements in international economics, in management specifically?
Dr. William Wei [00:17:07] Yes, I think as far as business and management concerns, there is already some of the interesting driving forces to create more courses using A.I., you know, assisting tools and also in terms of communicating, in terms of, you know, finding quick answers, you use a lot of A.I. applying opportunities. I would say in accounting and finance, A.I. is widely used. In marketing, certainly it’s going to that direction. Recently, I read an article talking about somebody who invented an A.I. tool, and they can use different ways of producing videos and pictures, and it’s actually replacing some of the directors’ law in filming, because A.I. can automatically generate multiple ways to describe the same scene and give you automate and multiple solutions for one concern and so that you can just release your workload and then find whatever way most suitable for your solution. So in other disciplines, as I said, for example, the supply chain and blockchain A.I. is also wildly used. So I will say A.I. is more maybe in the ways that can be used in the qualitative approach, but relatively relies in the quantitative approach where you do the business and economic analysis. And particularly as a manager, when we train their decision making abilities, when they’re facing different issues on how they make a decision and how they analyze based on analytical tools such as, you know, either qualitative or quantitative and reaching different alternatives and make decisions in the, you know, in a way that’s favorable for business development. A.I. cannot really make kind of that – it can train managers but they cannot make decision for the managers. So I would believe a lot of decision making process, a lot of decision related issues, A.I. Cannot really replace human being in those kind of directions. For example, when you look at a case study of a real scenario, normally you have discussions, you have debate, you have deliberate use of different solutions. A.I. can replace those places where you can have a discussion. You can have a, you know, a kind of in a way that debate, but normally they give you an answer, but you have to have the way of, you know, choose whatever way you want to make a decision. So A.I. might be having difficulty to really analyze those kind of functions.
Patricia [00:20:15] And in your experience, how can A.I. support or enhance the process of instructional design in higher education?
Dr. William Wei [00:20:25] Today, particularly after the COVID time, online activity – online learning are more welcome by the general, you know, student body and community. It used to be online degrees may not be valued as same as in-person degrees, but today, if you go to a lot of MBA programs, they might have a higher enrollment for online programs than the regular in-person programs. Or they might have a combination of both. You do part of the work online and then you get together and do it in person. So I would believe a lot of virtual learning, a lot of long distance learning, you know, people from different time zones learn together. Those kind of, you know, environments, A.I. will play a very big role. Even in person, you can deliver courses as a hybrid way and you have some students facing you in the classroom and you can have other or both students join you virtually. So then you need to know how to use the A.I. function to bring the technological in your classroom. So I think those kind of opportunities to reaching your students remotely, to reaching your industry you want to study remotely, to reaching the community remotely will be facilitated with A.I. tools very easily.
Patricia [00:21:52] Besides using A.I. to leverage and using that for remote teaching, [00:21:57]what other success stories or positive outcomes have you witnessed where A.I. has been transformative or had an impact on academic processes? [7.3s]
Dr. William Wei [00:22:06] [00:22:06]One of the key of artificial intelligence is the, for example, when we write a journal article, normally we need to do extensive literature review, and it’s very time consuming. And potentially you have to hire maybe researchers help you to survey the articles and to gather basic abstracts and conclusions and finding the misology and finding the linkage and literature gap among different, you know, publications before. I definitely believe A.I. can play a key role in finishing your work quickly while you do a literature review. But how you inquire in the future while you identify your methodology, you indentify your research question and while you’re doing your interview and getting that data collection part, obviously A.I. can also help you to do that. I would say, finishing an article, particularly in the academic side, it can be fastened by the A.I. tools. So that’s one of the very positive for professors, for other faculty members who are using A.I.. [71.0s]
Patricia [00:23:18] [00:23:18]And what advice would you give those other teachers and faculty members and administration looking to integrate A.I. into their institutions effectively? [7.8s]
Dr. William Wei [00:23:27] [00:23:27]Okay, I would believe it’s very important you put A.I. into your daily discussion. I think that’s very important. Unless some surprising things happen at the very last. And most of the time, we look at traditional ways of teaching and learning, and there are some very valuable things in the traditional way of learning and teaching Master’s. For example, discussion, case studies, fieldwork, you know, those kind of traditional ways. Basically, that’s cause for interaction in a real situation between human beings and the real interaction in terms of human participation. But how you integrate machine learning and the role of A.I. in the environment that not only facilitating your teaching experience and facilitating the student learning experience by how you use it effectively and transparently is very important. So I would recommend faculty members thinking about using the A.I. in their course and thinking about it biweekly in their course studies and their learning materials, because you cannot prevent students using it. And you better integrate those learning functions of A.I. into your classroom, and you have to prepare it quickly and respond to what the student’s call for actions. It’s very important. [86.8s]
Patricia [00:24:56] And as educators continue to slowly integrate A.I. into the classrooms, do you believe there’s a current risk or there will be a risk of overreliance in A.I. in academia? And if so, how can institutions mitigate this risk?
Dr. William Wei [00:25:11] Yes, 100%. I think this is not only going to the education sector. It’s actually applied to every sector, right? How A.I. replacing human beings, how A.I. replacing the experience part of, you know, human interaction, and how A.I. may lead human beings to, you know, in a way that a more controversial things happening. And I do believe we have to look at those kind of issues, particularly on the – if you look back from five or ten years later, for example, when the website is coming out, while you write and journal article at that time relying on most of reference of books and other printed materials, you don’t really reference a lot of website information because people will think it’s not reliable. But today, most of the knowledge, most of the data, most of the observations actually coming from online tools. So I was thinking after ten or twenty years, when you’re looking back at some of the things you have to prepare earlier and how you, you know, integrate fully functional artificial intelligence in the teaching and learning experience for students. So universities has to be reacting very proactively to those kind of solutions, either from the administrator like me or from the professors’ side, even from the staff and the students’ side.
Patricia [00:26:43] And in a grander scale outside the classrooms, how do you perceive the role of AI in addressing global challenges and fostering international collaboration in research and education?
Dr. William Wei [00:26:55] Yes. Well, one of the key is that A.I. will be basically based on the larger users data collection, and you have certain countries like China and India, you know, they have a mass population, and they might have loose policies on using the A.I. or whatever. For example, digital payments is widely used in Asian countries in some of the larger economies and compared with some of the practices here in the financial sector of using artificial intelligence, reaching out to your customer, for example, is another example. There are a lot of cultural barriers. There is a lot of sizing in different stuff like economy barriers. So we have to be very prudent on that. In Canada and in North America, how we compete with other countries is also an issue and in some other countries are using advanced technology and artificial intelligence in different sectors, maybe auto driving, automatic driving, maybe in terms of transportation tools in using A.I. and these are very advanced. But certainly some of the parts may not be applicable here North America or in the Canadian case. But we have to be very alert on those kind of directions, particularly when you’re comparing ability and comparing, you know, the outcome of your delivery of your education on the post-secondary sector. I think there’s a lot of country differences and also there’s a lot of cultural differences.
Patricia [00:28:43] Dr. Wei, you’re an expert in instructional design. How do you think A.I. can contribute to the personalization of education to meet the diverse needs of these students?
Dr. William Wei [00:28:53] Yes. For example, we have traditional classrooms. We also have classrooms tailored to physical challenged people. In this world, there’s a lot of people who have disability in different ways. Some have physical challenge disability, some might have learning disability, some have, you know, the inherited genetic, you know, disability in learning. I think A.I. will play a role in that and significantly help in terms of learning to a different audience, particularly in some rural areas for example. Also in terms of applying those kind of tools in different industries is also very critical. So I think in comparative-based speaking, in Canada, where in post-secondary, we are facing a lot of using of A.I. widely, but how you access the quality of using A.I. is another question because generally speaking, if you write a sentence and you ask a question with Chat GPT, they can give you a very standard answer. And those answers are evolving everyday, right? And with new data collected. But how you foresee and how far these answers are useful is a question because I’ve heard a lot of from academics talking about, okay, you can ask a question from Chat GPT, but if you really dig up into the depths and the whys of the knowledge and also on the innovative part of solution, those kind of A.I. cannot really function as a human being.
Patricia [00:30:39] [00:30:39]And what are your views on the responsibility of educators and institutions in educating students about A.I. ethics and its implications? [8.6s]
Dr. William Wei [00:30:49] [00:30:49]I think we have to start from the early, I guess, in junior and senior high school. They have different rules of using artificial technology. And we also have post-secondary, you know, worker in the university and colleges. As professors, we need to communicate with all sectors and the post-secondary school teachers and basically get an understanding of what is going on in their classroom using artificial technology. And so that we can give a consistent message and we can base on what the students experience from their high school, reaching out to the university level and understanding their habits of using A.I. and the way of evaluating those students, because I guess students are already starting using it to from even before they get into a university study, right? So we need to also understand what they were learning before and what is the automatic way. Basically in post-secondary, we want to create more knowledge, not only disseminating knowledge. I think at the moment, A.I. will be very helpful in disseminating knowledge but may not be very helpful while, you know, fully holistic way of creating knowledge. I think that’s university’s major function in a society. We’re creating knowledge, not only disseminating knowledge. [83.3s]
Patricia [00:32:14] That’s beautifully put, dr. Wei. And in your opinion, how do you think AI Purity’s A.I. text detection tool can contribute to maintaining the integrity of online academic content? Because we’re creating a tool that is basically can say whether the text is A.I. generated, human written, or now it has a new feature where it can even tell you if it’s A.I. generated that’s been paraphrased. So how do you think this will benefit classrooms in educational settings all around the world?
Dr. William Wei [00:32:46] I think it’s definitely beneficial because of in terms of cost or rented activities is reduce the cost recently. And but certainly there’s also, as I previously said, there’s a lot of information, this information related with that. For example, there in our talk, you can definitely report it and based on the whys and the way of speaking I have, you can probably generate a quite a different topic and a quite a different scenario. And 100% may not be me and realistically what I said, but you probably can generate through A.I. technological tools. Say, “Okay, this is what William Wei said.” But actually, it may not have happened, right? These kind of things happen a lot in the industry, in political affairs, in other industries. It’s very interesting, obviously, and I think audience has to have a way of distinguishing what is real and what is unreal and what is fake and what kind of result or rather from those kind of fake news or disinformation and misinformation. I think there must be some detecting tools. There must be some way of double check before some images and some of the, you know, audio materials going out. And it’s pretty dangerous. If misinformation and disinformation become true, then most of the audience cannot – they may have a way of distinguishing and also find, but most of the time they don’t have time to really look into it. So as a post-secondary educator, as an organization like your guys will play a key role to helping the audience to distinguish them and also to be more smart on those kind of information.
Patricia [00:34:45] Precisely. And, you know, in detecting and trying to distinguish what is A.I. generated text, you’re also going to be reliant on other A.I. detection tools such as our tools. But what do you think are the challenges and the criticisms there that you foresee in the development and the use of A.I. detection tools in professional and academic settings, especially since earlier we were talking about how these A.I. tools aren’t always 100% accurate?
Dr. William Wei [00:35:12] Yes, I don’t think anything is 100% accurate. It’s always depending on the angle of looking at things and the tendency, your analysis and also what kind of fundamental direction and basically decisions and related issues particularly to the business side. that’s the valuable part. So I wouldn’t say 100% either using the A.I. or without using the AI. So I would say the the best part of looking at using some of the detecting tools is that it will be very helpful for opposing educators who specifically prevent cheating and academic dishonesty happening widely and also addressing some of the immediate issues in the classroom, how you can effectively deliver your teaching material and at the same time, assessing your teaching effectiveness. I think those kind of detecting tools will be very helpful. It shouldn’t give an accurate answer. I think, a tendency or kind of, you know, basic understanding of the using of it and what are consequences it’s bringing in will be very useful instead of just giving an accurate estimation. Thank you.
Patricia [00:36:43] And how important is it for educators and researchers to be aware of the potential traces of A.I. and misinformation in online content and even in the papers that their students submit?
Dr. William Wei [00:36:56] Yes, I think there was a – before Chat GPT was widely used, there is a rumor that the scientists are basically using machine learning. They have written a research article, maybe in different scientific topic or maybe in biology or cyber. And they submitted it into a journal and it was a fake affiliation and fake name. And that editor of that journal, which is a quite a prestigious journal actually reveal the article was not written by a human being, but written by a machine and then goes through revision and resubmission several times so is the machine and the eventually got accepted. So that’s actually a joke, you know, in academic because the machine actually writes a better article than regular academics and regular scientists. But how do we detect that? How do we prevent those kind of things happening? Because that’s not a real person, but real person did it through machine learning. So I would say the most important is that we cannot hide from it. We have to openly discussing among academics. We have to be also learning the facts to practice from other institutions. I know, for example, in University of Toronto, they already have potential policies on those A.I. functions in the post-secondary. So it’s very important to have those kind of conversation from the very early age and to learn from our peers, particularly those larger institutions, has to also take a responsibility how they direct faculty members, students, staffs and community. Looking at the participation of using A.I. in regular learning and studying the process. Because eventually, as you said, we cannot prevent this happening and we have to embrace it and make it a better way of using technology.
Patricia [00:39:05] So that’s made me kind of curious. So when you have students and you maybe you you check any of their essays or maybe you see any of their work is A.I. generated, what are the consequences for these students?
Dr. William Wei [00:39:19] Well, certainly it depends on very much on the course professor to detect it. I think if I receive some notice of offenses from using technology, particularly during the exams and some of them are actually open book exams, but we still don’t allow students using those A.I. tools during the open book exam. So this is our bottom line. And you can reference something, you know, traditional printed material in some of the, you know, the knowledge you gain from other sources, but you cannot rely Chat GPT to answer your question. And the important part is that you can use some online searching functions to collect your data, to be more familiar with the topic and write up an answer. But you don’t directly ask some, you know, tools and give you a direct answer and produce everything to you. So that’s some of the bottomline professors already doing in their classroom during their exam, looking at their assignment. So I think that’s that’s the very bottomline – what we ask our students from not doing it.
Patricia [00:40:41] And in what ways do you think A.I. detection tools, other companies, maybe like AI Purity, how can we support academic institutions in ensuring that the credibility of information shared within online communities? And how do we bridge this gap? And how do we stop students from using A.I. in a wrong way?
Dr. William Wei [00:41:03] Yes, I think you guys coming from the industry, and you are using those kind of softwares or whatever developing those capabilities to detect A.I. or assisting, you know, assignment results from the exam. Probably, there is a need of a bigger picture and the bigger conversation circle of professors, students, university administrators with people like you. So we need to potentially sit together. We can identify some of the persistent and intimidating issues of using A.I., particularly in evaluating students. And you guys have a better understanding of cross universities, cross education institutions, how each of these dealing with and we can put the resources together. And certainly a company like you, organization like you can help a lot in terms of training our faculty members, in terms of also, you know, providing some of the solutions for us.
Patricia [00:42:21] Thank you for that. And what recommendations will you provide to institutions aiming to create policies around the ethical use of A.I. in academia?
Dr. William Wei [00:42:30] Well, I think it has to be widely representative when they’re creating a policy. And it’s also specifically differences among different universities, some larger institution. They have a different interpretation and different way of looking at it. And they’re more – my guess is that they are more positively looking at how A.I. can help with research. A.I. can help with producing and creating knowledge and how A.I. can effectively help deliver courses, particularly long-distance virtual courses. For teaching institutions like us. Potentially a lot of emphasis might be evaluation of students, delivery models, delivery challenges, and also how we prevent those misuse of A.I. In a classroom in a way that creating a learning – a better learning and teaching experience to the students. So there is a need, obviously also those research institutions and also teaching institutions or the institutions in between to get together to talk about it, because normally some of the things happening in smaller institutions might be a little bit different than a larger solution. And there is also disciplines specific. For example, today you probably can use A.I. very easily to generate a piece of music and how that, you know, relate with music professors’, you know, way of delivering courses in education. We don’t have quite a clue, because there’s a lot of discipline differences. So we need those conversations among disciplines. In other more creative, you know, driven industries and also subjects maybe, you know, even painting, you can have A.I. generated pictures, right? Very easily, and it’s more simple and more, you know, impressive than human creation. But how you really look at those values is another question.
Patricia [00:44:59] We were talking about, like teaching students how to be responsible with their use of A.I. and talking amongst other educators and even talking amongst other disciplines about how to properly use A.I. in education. Do you think there should be a more global conversation about this? Do you think it’s like a pressing issue that we should address right now?
Dr. William Wei [00:45:20] 100%. There needs a global discussion on that. And I said there’s also a lot of geographic and cultural differences. I heard some of the comments, for example, in universities traditionally, maybe in Europe, for example, there’s a lot of formal majors in translation. For example, if you are a German university, you might have majors in English studies, translation studies, not only in the language of English, but maybe in, you know, French, in Spanish, a lot of Eastern European country languages. Because when the European Union have meetings, you have multiple more than 20 or 30 official languages using in those kind of settings. So in university, you might have a Department of Language Studies and still going to have to learn different languages. So Germans, they have to learn French, for instance, and have to learn English obviously. Spanish students have to be accredited with Italian, those kind of things, but may not be that important today anymore because of the A.I. widely used in translation – in interpretation. So how those kind of disciplines can progress? Because a lot of language learning is not only the language itself. It’s actually integrative culture and how, you know, interpretating tools or translating tools can help with the cultural understanding. Maybe a poem written by Shakespeare, when it’s translated in the German language, the tones and the, you know, experience when the audience hears, maybe quite different from the original English piece, right? So those kind of things we have to really discuss based on, as you said, geographical differences, cultural differences as what we discuss and also disciplinary differences. This is only one interesting thing I’m looking at translation, but other you know, for example, medical doctors, lawyers, and health care workers. All will be impacted by using artificial intelligence, and how you value those kind of work is very questionable.
Patricia [00:47:44] Thank you for that answer. And how do you think A.I. technologies assist in fundraising efforts for educational institutions? And have you seen any successful examples of this?
Dr. William Wei [00:47:57] Well, it is challenging in a way that obviously you can use A.I. tools story to reach out massive audience and the massive receivers who want to – you want to reach out for your fundraising activities. Why, it always depends on the commitment of the potential donors to your institution. I don’t have a lot of comments on the fundraising scenes, but I do see a lot of potential funds coming from industry sectors and sponsor universities to look at specific industry needs. As I said, for example, accounting and finance, they hugely used A.I. assisting tools today in their industry. So basically you cannot find anybody today as a content or text experts working in a regular office in downtown Toronto. Most of the time they might be just working from home in Mississauga, in other places, right? They don’t necessarily travel to their work place. So those kind of effective usage of artificial intelligence in their daily work, generating reports, generating data analysis, you know, results are widely used. So how we can, you know, looking at industry, call and educate university professors and also integrating in their classroom and linking with the industry needs of using A.I. Is very critical here because our basic approach is that we want to prevent massive using of A.I. In the classroom, but the industry just opposite. They want massive use of A.I. to reduce cost in their daily operation. So this can be a contradictory phenomenon and how you balance this is very critical.
Patricia [00:50:10] Thank you. And in your opinion, [00:50:12]what are the key skills that students should develop in order to thrive in an increasingly A.I. driven academic and professional landscape? [7.0s]
Dr. William Wei [00:50:20] [00:50:20]I think in university we emphasize a lot of critical thinking, and that’s still very valuable. And also on top of that, business needs a lot of responsible players and a lot of proactive decision players and a lot of, you know, ethical business leaders. So those are the functions of, maybe in other ways, the more innovative business models will be created. So innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, you know, cultural sensitivity in terms of, you know, question and critical thinking and find a solution and basically make a decision and also take the responsibility of some of the business practice is very important. Those are the functions A.I. cannot replace human being. And so, that’s what we want to train our students to be.[65.1s]
Patricia [00:51:26] Yeah, I absolutely agree. And looking ahead, how do you envision the continued evolution of the relationship between A.I. technologies and academia?
Dr. William Wei [00:51:36] I think academia is always very advanced in different sectors. And for example, the most important and influential A.I. expert, normally not only, you know, fall into the technological competence, but actually fall into the icicle piece of it, and also fall into the cross culture aspects of it. So I think there is a call for academic, not only only looking at the technological developments of using A.I., but look at the social, economic impact, legal impacts of using the A.I. So that’s something we need a heated discussion because only focusing on the technological part is not enough. It will eventually bring a lot of social contradictions, a lot of political disturbance, a lot of economical consequences as far as a lot of legal reasons. So all these other considerations are more regulated in the human society, which we cannot collect from using machine. But certainly one of the analogy people always use is that before the Industrial Revolution, when the automobiles were invented, people using forcing powers, you know, dragging a horse wagon, they 100% doesn’t like an automobile. They will say automobile will easily kill people right away on the road. And when you run, the animal is more safer. So those are the discussions 200 years ago, 300 years ago. But today, nobody will say you’re better riding a horse. It’s safer than riding a car. So in the future, well, right now, the discussion is that when you are using an automobile to a driving automatically, it may not be safe for driving as a human being. But what about the 20 years later? The discussion topic might be very different. So my position is that we need to have a conversation not only on the technical part, but also on the social, on the legal political part, particularly economic part of the discussion.
Patricia [00:54:07] Thank you, Dr. Wei. And just one last question. Would you be open or interested in using A.I. detection tools such as AI Purity in your classrooms?
Dr. William Wei [00:54:16] I don’t think there is no way of not using it. I think the other piece I didn’t mention, you know, is academic freedom. That applies to using of artificial intelligence. I do cherish some of our professors, might be just, you know, using the the traditional ways of teaching and evaluating their students. That’s their choice. If they find there’s a value of doing it, certainly they can continue doing that. But seeing how the student will make them change, the society will make them change, and there’s a lot of those considerations. We should be very open to use of those tools. On the other side, academic freedom is very important. So I would let the professors and classroom decide instead of telling them to do what?
Patricia [00:55:12] Thank you so much, Dr. Wei. On behalf of the whole team here at AI purity, we thank you for gracing our podcast and for the time and the valuable insights you’ve shared with us. Our podcast will be shared in a worldwide scale. Is there any message you’d like to share to students out there or educators out there?
Dr. William Wei [00:55:30] I think finally, I want to say we have to look at a lot of cultural differences in dealing with artificial intelligence. Exactly, another piece of academic endeavor. There’s a lot of contradictions over there. So would believe in Canada, because our university sector is changing our, composition of students and faculty member also changing very quickly. So we have to be aware of that on the cultural aspects of using artificial intelligence. Thank you.
Patricia [00:56:03] Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Wei. And thank you to all our listeners for joining us on this enlightening episode of The AI Purity Podcast. We hope you’ve enjoyed uncovering the mysteries of A.I. generated text and the cutting edge solutions offered by AI purity. Stay tuned for more in-depth discussions and exclusive insights into the worlds of artificial intelligence, text analysis, and beyond. Don’t forget to visit our website. That’s www.ai-purity.com and share this podcast to spread the word about the remarkable possibilities that AI Purity offers. Until next time, keep exploring and keep innovating and keep unmasking the A.I.. I thank you once again, Dr. William Wei for being on our podcast. Have an amazing day ahead. Thank you so much for being here.
