“Thinking Outside the Bot” symposium on Artificial Intelligence

HFC presents “Thinking Outside the Bot: Optimizing A.I. Good While Minimizing the Bad” from 9:00 a.m. to noon on Friday, September 15, in the Community Rooms of the Welcome Center (Building WC) on the main campus.

This symposium is free to all HFC faculty and staff. A light breakfast will be served.
Please register today

Keynote speakers

Dr. Julie Hui, assistant professor of information at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Nick Gaspar, Director of the Office of Online and Digital Education at the University of Michigan-Flint, will be the keynote speakers at the symposium.

About Hui: An alumna of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University, Hui’s research broadly focuses on human-computer interaction, specifically how technology impacts access to work and the search for employment. She studies and designs socio-technical systems that support career development in self-directed forms of employment, such as micro-entrepreneurship, freelance work, and gig work.

About Gaspar: Gaspar earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science with a concentration in network engineering from U-M. He went on to earn his MBA with a concentration in finance from UM-Flint, graduating with high honors. He is a strategic leader with a proven track record of building and leading cross-functional business teams, driving change initiatives, and fulfilling the interests and expectations of key constituents and stakeholders. At the symposium, he will share his tutorials and extensive experience with ChatGPT.

“As we increasingly integrate A.I. into various aspects of our lives such as education, business, or creative endeavors, prompt-literacy will become a vital skill, just as Google searching did,” said Gaspar. “In the future, a solid grasp of prompt writing can be the difference between harnessing the full power of A.I. and being left grappling with a tool that is not reaching its potential.”

Pedagogical approaches to A.I.

After the keynotes, participants will divide into interactive breakout sessions to help manage the increased use of A.I. in classrooms. There will also be a special performance at the symposium arranged by John Michael Sefel and Anthony Lai.

“It is imperative that faculty realize the paradigm shift in not only education but our way of life that recent and evolving developments in A.I. will entail. Think of the growth of the internet over the past few decades and its now ubiquitous impact on our daily lives as an analogy – and then increase that exponentially,” said English instructor Scott Still.

Along with English instructors Rosemary Miketa and Ruth Haller and psychology instructor Alison Buchanan, Still is one of the symposium’s organizers.

“Virtually no instructor today would approach a course without it involving at least some type of internet use – such as course delivery, academic research, or any other number of possible implementations,” said Still. “While the potential misuse of A.I. by students is unfortunately even greater than with the internet, we cannot ignore its existence or eliminate it from our curricula. Our students will need to be competent and deft in the uses of A.I. if we hope to fully prepare them for their future jobs and careers.”

He continued: “This leaves faculty in a precarious position, requiring us to deeply rethink our pedagogical approach. We will need to balance the need to impart essential basic skills and the capacity for critical thinking with the recognition that tomorrow's workplace will look vastly different from today's. After all, none of us are teaching students how to use microfiche or microfilm readers any more. And we would be doing them a tremendous disservice if we did not recognize the emergence and transformative future of A.I. in a similar way.”

Register today

Use the link at the top of the page to register so we will know you plan to attend. For questions or more information, contact Miketa at (313) 845-9622 or rmiketa@hfcc.edu.