Northeast Pennsylvania Colleges, Businesses Phase in AI – Government Technology

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Northeast Pennsylvania Colleges, Businesses Phase in AI

Today, he says AI has changed his life for the better, by cutting down the length of time it takes to accomplish work, removing communication barriers and accomplishing tasks he would have had to pay others to do, among other ways. He compared AI to a calculator.

“When I was in middle school and high school, teachers said, ‘You’re not going to be able to sit around with a calculator and do all your work.’ That’s exactly how it works,” he said, adding that while students should work and struggle, he feels a lot of schoolwork is “busy work.”

“I think the style of work will get more intentional and meaningful,” he said. “AI is a tool, it’s not a replacement.”

The tool, which most notably gives humans the capability to solve problems, make decisions and automate certain functions with increased ease and speed, can seem confusing to workers who aren’t traditionally versed in or have apprehension around computer systems.

For younger generations, like Simrell’s, raised with easy access to computers since birth, there is less resistance. This set includes the current college class, the youngest of whom were born in 2007, who will soon head into the working world.

While it may seem like a distant blur to some, 2007 was a substantial year for technological advancements. In that 365-day period alone, Apple launched its iPhone, social media platforms Facebook and Twitter expanded worldwide, and Google bought YouTube. Since then, the AI industry has grown, quickly, under the radar.

Today, it quietly looms large, touching nearly every industry in Northeast Pennsylvania.

It is not a new concept. While British mathematician Alan Turing is considered to have ideated the concept, studies in the field reportedly began at Dartmouth University in 1956 by college math professor John McCarthy, who led a summer conference aimed at unlocking the possibilities of the science. McCarthy is also credited for giving it the name we use today: artificial intelligence.

Stakeholders marched onward, expanding on the technology, which led to the development of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and projects like the self-driving car, the Deep Blue chess-playing computer, sending AI-aided NASA rovers to Mars, and virtual assistants Siri and Alexa.

Following COVID, the development of self-learning generative AI — which allows users to create all manner of written reports, photos, graphics, and videos using only text prompts, such as with OpenAI’s ChatGPT program using an LLM, or large language model — has put AI into the direct global spotlight in a big way. Suddenly, work that was inconceivable to some is now possible in a fraction of the time. For example, AI is capable of writing a book in a few days, a task that might have traditionally taken months or years. Research papers and event posters can be generated in moments.

With the technology’s high accessibility, the region’s colleges are taking careful note, and trying to stay ahead, or at least keep up with the countless advancements and ramifications as changes in the AI landscape tumble out at lightning speed. Young students’ hands-on knowledge of and fast familiarity with AI presents infinite potential, as well as risks, as they forge ahead into their future careers.

Fred Aebli, a program coordinator and lecturer in information sciences and technology at Penn State Scranton in Dunmore, and local speaker on AI, is constantly juggling how and when to incorporate the “new” science into his own classroom.

“If you’re teaching a technology class, you’re making a conscious decision if the students are using these tools or not,” Aebli explained, demonstrating the challenges of teaching a science that many teachers are still trying to learn and understand themselves. “AI is changing so fast,” he said.

Aebli explained that many programs in daily classroom use “weave in AI features” and don’t offer an option to disable them. “It’s (AI is) automatically creeping in as a tool,” he said, adding that while some professors are open-minded to the technology, not all are.

“Technology has always caused this kind of stress,” he said, stating that recruiting efforts are proving that students must be knowledgeable with the tools in order to thrive in the careers the school promises to prepare them for.

“There are students being told not to use them, and these corporations are saying, ‘No, no, no, you’re going to use them.’ It’s an eye-widening experience for these young people,” Aebli said. “They (students) should be informed as to where it’s leading.”

Aebli said there should be an emphasis on classes around ethics and process management, versus a degree track, outlining appropriate times and ways to use AI. With the countless applications and opportunities AI offers, it also presents countless concerns. Fears range widely, from technology taking the jobs of humans, to dystopian 1980s sci-fi film-style fears of the science overrunning humanity and taking over the world. Aebli maintains a realistic outlook.

“I’ve been around technology far too long to know that anything built by humans is flawed, and AI’s got a lot of flaws,” he said. “We’ve already seen them. It’s never going to be perfect if humans have their hands on it.” Aebli added that AI learns by watching humans.

“Companies are made up of people, and they’re messy,” he said, sharing that in consulting for corporations, he observed that many employees “don’t know what their jobs are,” and that “you can’t train someone to do something if you don’t know what it is” — diminishing certain AI overthrow-related fears.

“You’re going to see AI systems helping out in certain areas that they (workers) didn’t think of in the past, but other areas will stay in the hands of the humans, at least for the next five, 10 years,” Aebli hypothesized. “I don’t see it as being so dire.”

Beth Ritter-Guth, the associate dean of virtual services at Northampton Community College, who oversees the school’s online program, virtual reality, augmented reality, and now, AI, works with AI every day.

“AI is permeating all of the different tools that we use,” she said, explaining the needs of the students and faculty, specifically where AI is concerned, are shifting.

“The demands for educating faculty and helping students in support for future jobs, that is more and more of my work,” Ritter-Guth said. “We have a lot of work to do to make sure our students are prepared for the jobs of the future.”

She said at first, there was a fear, “because nobody really understands how it works.”

“AI is not new,” she explained. “If you’ve been using spell checker, chat prediction … AI has been around, we just didn’t know that is what it was called. Now we have tools that can help us write better, create better graphics and transform our workflow.”

Ritter-Guth doesn’t believe that AI-related fears are wholly warranted.

“The misnomer and myth about it is that it will replace humans,” she said, confirming that AI is not yet sentient. “It can’t think for itself, so there has to be a human checker,” she said, noting that AI can “hallucinate,” or “make stuff up if it can’t find an answer.”

How AI will factor into many Northeast Pennsylvania businesses is still uncertain, yet the technology is becoming increasingly more incorporated across the region. For local businesses, keeping a steady head and realistic expectations about AI’s capabilities is paramount.

“I think all technology is neither good nor evil,” Ritter-Guth explained. “It has ways to transform, very positively, our society, but it’s how we use it.”

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