Professors, How Are You Using AI in Your Day to Day Work? – Daily Nous

This post was originally published on this site.

More outside of academia than within it, one hears things like “in a few years saying ‘I don’t use AI’ will sound as weird as someone today saying ‘I don’t use the internet,’” or “if you’re not using AI, you’re missing out and wasting time.”

But academia isn’t far behind. Just yesterday the California State University Chancellor’s office announced “a first-of-its kind public-private initiative to establish the CSU as the nation’s first and largest AI-powered public university system to serve its entire community.”

So are you using AI?

I’ll admit the answer for me is not much. I know I regularly post about the technology here—we should know what is going on—but as impressive as it is, for various reasons (ranging from the principled to the personal to, I’ll admit, the grumpy and inconsistent), I’ve been somewhat reluctant to use it.

Yet if I look five or ten years down the road, it seems like we will be in a world in which the use of AI tools will not just be normal; facility with them will be expected, and that expectation will inform the social and professional norms we’ll all be subject to, whether we like it or not.

I suppose we can stand athwart our computers yelling “stop”. Or we could get on with it. Today, even if just out of curiosity, let’s entertain that second option.

The aim of this post is to gather information and share ideas for using AI in our work.

There are different aspects of our jobs as professors: teaching, research, service, perhaps public outreach. Are you using AI of any sort for any of the tasks involved in these different aspects of our work? Tell us about it. What tasks? What AI tools? How?

Is there a particular kind of task you think you’d like to learn how to use AI for, but don’t know how? Ask about it; maybe someone else is doing it, or can suggest something useful.

Do you think this kind of inquiry is misguided and want to explain why? Don’t. That’s not what this post is for. (Do you want to complain about this limitation? Also don’t. (And so on, my all-too-clever readers.))

Thank you.

UPDATE: I think it would be especially helpful if people sharing how they use AI in their work tell us which AI models they’re using. If you’re able to share more information, such as the kinds of prompts you use, or other methods for getting good results from your AI use, that would be helpful, too.