ChatGPT, Midjourney and Dall-E 2: What is the future of AI in education?

How is AI going to impact higher education in Malaysia? 

Ho: AI tools will undoubtedly disrupt the higher education value chain, from student recruitment to alumni engagement. Imagine having all the knowledge in the world at our fingertips.

That said, there are some important strategic questions to consider. How would the nature of work change now that AI tools permeate all sectors? What are the skills and competencies that graduates need? 

Yan: ​​I believe AI will help move certain processes forward in the way work is created, from learning how to create art to raising the standards of what a professional can contribute in the creation of certain creative works.

What are your concerns about faculties using AI tools for assignments and projects? 

Ho: Some universities have banned AI tools, particularly ChatGPT, while some have begun regulating their use. Others have even provided recommendations on leveraging AI tools in teaching and learning. This situation reminds many of when calculators was first introduced into the classroom; there were concerns that using calculators would harm learning by shortcutting the students’ thinking process.

Today, calculators are allowed only in high schools after students go through basic mathematics training. Will AI tools such as ChatGPT take a similar path? Some initial concerns about the use of these tools by both faculty and students revolve around the ability to develop original thoughts and content.

Yan: The thing that needs careful consideration is when we try to define the assessment criteria for a student’s artistic or creative skills when he or she uses an AI tool since some of the processes and decisions are outsourced to AI.

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How is ChatGPT different from software and research tools such as Google, Excel and Python which have long been part of academic practice?

Ho: These tools have one thing in common—they help us to be more productive by automating tasks and workflows. ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 push the frontier of automation and productivity further by enabling us to command, to our liking, the creation of new intellectual content.

Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and InDesign have long been part of students and artists’ design process. Are generative AI tools such as Midjourney and Dall-E 2 just another part of the process? 

Yan: It would probably serve as part of the process of artwork creation either as a pre-production tool (generating raw visual material to be refined) or post-production (machine learning samples for future automation). Midjourney and Dall-E 2 are known as 'narrow AI', which is an AI programme built to achieve specific purposes to appear as though the outcomes are produced by human intelligence.

Unlike Photoshop and Illustrator that require humans to put together the series of decisions and inputs manually to generate a creative outcome, AI works by processing massive datasets in a pre-programmed manner and simulate a series of complex decision-making to generate a certain result, omitting as much human intervention as possible. 

Dall-E 2 and Midjourney can be useful as part of certain designing processes such as moodboarding, visual ideation, and prototyping. Where do we draw the line when it comes to students using AI for inspiration? 

Yan: To understand the syntax in constructing a good prompt to achieve the desired outcome actually requires a lot of nested knowledge in the field of art and design. So perhaps there is still some merit for students that have good verbal intelligence, combined with actual knowledge in the field. The challenge is identifying how much automation should be allowed in producing the final outcomes. 

Google has unveiled DreamFusion, a text-to-3D AI that builds upon text-to-image generators to generate 3D models, and Meta has released Make-A-Video, a text-to-video AI that is in development. How are universities adapting with the rise of AI tools? 

Ho: APU will lead the adoption of responsible AI through automated content creation by giving ChatGPT the lesson outline and ask it to generate a script. Feed the script into an AI-driven video tool and upload a nice image of the teacher for it to produce a video with lip-synching matching words in the script.

AI will also be used for redesigning assessments and personalised content recommendations. 

Yan: We are careful not to get ahead of ourselves with the predictions of what processes or jobs will eventually get phased out. Rather, be mindful of how the market adopts these tools in the creative workflow and equip our students. The goal is to produce students that are adaptive to new technology and processes, rather than reactive or passive towards them.

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Large uncurated data collected from the past may fail to keep up with current social and political progress. What are some of the legal or ethical issues surrounding ChatGPT, and how will they affect higher education? 

Ho: There is an overarching concept called Responsible AI, which means we should design AI systems considering their potential impact on individuals, the society, and the environment. We must ensure that these systems are fair, accountable and transparent. AI systems used for predictive policing discriminating against certain groups of people are a classic example. There were also reports of facial recognition systems that are less accurate for people with particular skin colour. How does this happen? It’s all in the data that we use to train AI systems.

There are also concerns regarding deepfakes and legal concerns such as intellectual property infringement, privacy violations, and liability from misinformation. 

With the advent of AI, there comes the problem of equitable access. In your opinion, what educational reforms are needed to minimise the digital gap? 

Ho: Adequate digital infrastructure must be there to allow affordable access to the internet. Affordable devices and AI tools are also essential. Once these two ingredients are in place, we can look at the transformation in teaching and learning, starting with digital and AI literacy for both teachers and students.

Currently, AI tools still require refinement and modification from designers, but there will be substantial impacts on the marketing, advertising, software, and design industries. How is One Academy keeping courses relevant and competitive? 

Yan: We've been using GPT3 and Dall-E since 2021 and incorporating them into some of the design proposals in advertising classes. Ever since Open AI was released to the public for beta testing, the course team has been experimenting with the capabilities of AI and how that could make creative work more interesting. One of the projects that our students have done was to use GPT3 powered Dall-E to generate unique and personalised ads based on our target audiences' posts in their social feeds.

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What are the skills needed for students or graduates today? 

Ho: Skills to work with data. Competencies to work and collaborate with AI systems and robots. Ability to unlearn and relearn.

Yan: Constantly develop the artistic discernment to make tasteful design decisions. A growing competency in manipulating the image creation tools of their choice in the most productive manner. Verbal intelligence to tackle problems using language-based reasoning and articulate them with clarity to their audience. The right ethics to use all the above to promote human flourishing. 

In the context of higher education in Malaysia, which changes brought about by generative AI are here to stay? 

Ho: We will see an aggressive move to more authentic forms of assessments where we measure what a student can do in a real-world setting instead of what a student knows. I'm personally excited about the prospect of having a life-like personal tutor on personal devices powered by machine learning and generative AI. This technology is already here today—we see many life-like virtual influencers with millions of followers. Why not virtual personal tutors?   

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