PLAI Summit

PLAI Summit Schedule

9:00-10:00 am
Embracing AI as Essential Learning: Preparing Students for Life Beyond College

Generative AI tools have had an astonishingly quick impact on the ways we learn, work, think, and create. While higher education’s initial response was to develop strategies to diminish AI’s influence in the classroom, it is now clear that AI competencies and literacies must be embraced as essential learning for most colleges and universities. These responses and realities create a challenging tension that higher education must work to resolve.  Drawing from his new book, Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), Dr. C. Edward Watson will detail the challenges and opportunities that have emerged for higher education, especially in terms of pedagogical practice and student learning. The core focus will be on concrete approaches and strategies higher education can adopt, both within the classroom and across larger curricular structures, to best prepare students for the life that awaits them after graduation. Dr. Watson will also detail the pedagogical possibilities regarding how AI can have a positive impact on student learning. 

10:10-11:10 am
The Road Ahead: Creativity, Safety, and Emergent Behavior

Dr. Jeff Schatten and Dr. Joshua Fairfield of the PLAI Lab at Washington and Lee University will discuss the impacts rogue AI will have on human learning, safety, and creativity. Given what we know about how AI behaves, they will consider what it means to develop the critical cognitive skills necessary to adapt to a rapidly changing world as well as ensuring that we are all future-ready for a world increasingly generated by AI.

11:20 am-12:20 pm
AI Resilience

Recent Washington and Lee University alumni will share their experiences graduating just a couple of years before ChatGPT hit the scene in late 2022. Ethan Fischer ’20 (VP Strategy and Business Development at K Health), Logan Brand ’20 (CEO and Founder of Selium Solutions), and Kaitlyn Brock ’20 (FAAS Senior Consultant at EY) will reflect on their professional adaptation to the AI breakthrough and the learning experiences that helped them upskill just in time.

12:20-2:00 pm
Lunch (Cannan Green)

2:10-3:10 pm
Cheat Code or Catalyst?  The Impact of AI on Learning 

Is AI just a tool for cheating, or can it genuinely enhance learning? In this presentation, Dr. Dave Dixon, Head of AI Education & Innovation at MIT Open Learning, and Dr. Jacob Gibson, Visiting Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science at Washington and Lee University, will take a straightforward look at the evidence behind AI’s growing role in education. They will discuss the fears that many academics share, and what possible paths the future of education might take. We’ll explore the current state of AI, including complex reasoning on expert-level tests and the best evidence on creative and novel idea generation. The discussion will be grounded in evidence-based findings, including a recent meta-analysis of 51 experimental studies covering AI as an educational tool, examining its effects on student learning and motivation. We will also touch on the chance to be part of a major research study on AI use in higher education right now.

3:20-4:20 pm
When to Press PLAY: A Keywords Approach to AI

Using generative AI comes with cultural, economic, social, and political considerations. Dr. Lauren Tilton, the E. Claiborne Robins Professor of Liberal Arts and Digital Humanities and Director for the Center for Liberal Arts and AI (CLAAI) at the University of Richmond, will begin with a brief overview of the history of AI that has led to our current generative AI moment. We will then turn to a series of keywords such as creativity, environment, ethics, and power to guide our discussions about when to press the AI button-and when not to. Along the way, participants will be invited to engage with fellow attendees.

Get to know the human speakers presenting at the PLAI Summit.

For more information, visit the PLAI LAB.