In the second episode of a three-part series on college students and generative AI, host Angeline Corvaglia is joined by Ilkem Kayican Dipcin from Sabanci University. Together, they discuss a survey conducted with first-year university students on their perspectives on AI's impact on society and their lives. The key takeaways include students' interest in AI's role in changing job markets, automation, personal decision-making, and ethical considerations. They emphasize the need to balance the excitement and concerns surrounding AI and highlight the importance of critical thinking for the next generation. The series gives a very interesting look into university students' views on using AI, and underscores the necessity of comprehensive education on AI, balancing career ambitions with ethical awareness.

 00:00 Introduction to the Series

01:07 Survey Insights: Students' Views on AI

01:25 AI's Impact on Job Markets and Careers

05:03 Ethical Considerations and Future Skills

09:27 Balancing Hype and Reality

10:16 Conclusion and Next Steps 

Link to podcast with Cal Newport mentioned in the episode: https://www.futureupodcast.com/episodes/searching-for-fit-the-impacts-of-ai-in-higher-ed/

Special thanks to

Ilkem Kayican Dipcin for taking time to be a part of this episode!

Find her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilkem-kayican-dipcin-25682977/

Episode sponsored by Data Girl and Friends

They are on a mission to build awareness and foster critical thinking about AI, online safety, privacy, and digital citizenship. They inspire the next generation to navigate the digital world confidently and responsibly through fun, engaging, and informative content. They focus on empowering young digital citizens and their families through engaging and informative learning.

Find out more at: https://data-girl-and-friends.com/

List of Data Girland Friends materials about some of the topics covered:

• Article for young teens about the responsible use of generation AI for learning: https://data-girl-and-friends.com/in-school-how-to-make-sure-ai-assists-not-replaces/
• Educational workbook for teens: "The Empathy Challenge: Discover the importance of empathy in the digital world."  https://data-girl-and-friends.pagetiger.com/empathy-challenge/1
• Ayla AI Girl video, "What does AI understand?" https://vimeo.com/916925937
• Ayla AI Girl video, "Does AI have an opinion?" https://vimeo.com/919742701

Contact us for any questions or comments: https://digi-dominoes.com/contact-us/

Digital Dominoes. Welcome back to our three-part series on college students and generative AI. I'm Angeline Corvaglia, and this is the second episode of the series. I'm joined by Ilkem Kayican Dipcin, an instructor at Sabanci University in Istanbul, who proactively teaches her students how to use generative AI responsibly.

Together, Ilkem and I did a series short survey of her first year university students opinions on generative AI and what they want to learn about it. Last time we talked about key findings, such as students awareness of the need for AI skills in future jobs and their curiosity about understanding AI algorithms.

This time, we'll be talking about the second major question included in the survey, which was the aspects of AI's impact on society in their personal lives that interested the 76 students who took the survey most. Welcome back. Let's dive right into my talk with Ilkem.

The other major question that we asked the students is which aspect of AI's impact on society and your personal life interest you the most?

And we had the following results. For 37%, AI's role in changing job markets and careers was the most interesting, followed by 31% for the shift towards automation and efficiency, 16% for AI's influence on personal decision making, and 13% for the ethical considerations of AI in daily life, and finally 3% said they were not interested.

It's because I see it as an uncertain future. And I was focused on what is certain, which is the influence and the ethical considerations, but I see now that for youth of today, it is certain. The impact is certain and they want to understand better. They want to have better guidance, right? Oh, totally.

They are very similar to what the businesses try to do. I mean, so they are maybe at its closest moment now. Because we try to develop the skills that our students will need to do their job better in the future and now in existing business and companies, they are trying to upskill and reskill their own workforce.

So, ffor that reason, I also shared with you, Angeline, you might remember Cal Newport from Georgetown University, computer scientist, and he is an expert. He's saying that maybe in higher education, things might get a little bit slower. Do not rush in teaching different artificial intelligence skills to your students because first of all, just stop and observe what kind of tools are effective and operational in the job market.

What kind of different artificial intelligence tools and models business will choose to use so that you can observe it, and find the skills that integrate them into your courses. So I think that was also an aha moment for me when I was listening to the podcast that Cal Newport shared his opinions.

Exactly. I mean, I think basically anyone is going to be in the same, in the same situation. I was surprised until you told me about this being a technical university, I was surprised that 31% were concerned about the shift towards automated efficiency. But then this makes sense that I think it's a similar thing as the first one about job markets and careers from often from a technical perspective that there's a different point of view.

Because I think what we think about what AI is going to do is for the jobs of the future is very much fashioned by who's been loudest. Microsoft has obviously been one of the loudest. You know, they put, they put ChatGBT into their suite much faster than I personally thought was a good idea. And so we're kind of expecting we're at this moment in time, probably whoever listens to this in a year will be like, wow, that this is what the future would be like automation of thiis office work.

So it just makes you act differently than, than you expect. So they're really, so companies are figuring this out. And they're banning it for a lot of stuff. So, so the suites that were like, Oh, this is what's going to like revolutionize office work. It actually isn't doing it. And, and this was one of the points of the podcast was, well, that's normal.

One of them is definitely critical thinking. And I, as an AI enthusiast and AI strategist, all the time, keep my critical perspective about this. Because I also have this concern about being too much hyped about it. And yeah, also being too resistant. So I think that's the spectrum, which is very normal and natural.

So that's why I definitely agree with the thing that although I try to promote using it responsibly and ethically and integrated in their daily life to my students, I always, um, keep them saying, just keep saying them that. This is something they need to be in control. Yeah, exactly. And all the time individualized this process.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, just for anyone who's, who's listening, who's not, I mean, who was thinking about how can I help my, my, my kids, my, the youth in my life, I think one of the, the best things we can do is remind them what hype means because they're at an age where they haven't understood all of this has happened multiple times.

And that's a wrap for today's episode. It's clear that students are eager to build their AI skills and understand the importance of staying ahead in our rapidly evolving tech world. But while we can and should support them in this journey, it's also crucial to help them keep a balanced perspective. We need to remind them, and by we I mean adults who've been through this before, we need to remind today's young people that while AI will likely be a game changer in many ways, not everything they hear about it is set in stone. There's a lot of hype and the future is still very uncertain.

We really need more of those people. So please join us next time for the third and final part of our series, where we'll look at specific comments about AI that Ilkem’s students shared in the survey. Please let us know what you think about what we're talking about in this episode and the others. Check out more about us and subscribe at digi-dominoes.com.

Check them out at data-girl-and-friends.com. Until next time, stay curious and keep learning. Digital Dominoes.