Sunday, May 21, 2023
2:00 – 3:30 p.m. (including Q&A)
Bldg. 20, Level 2 (Rehearsal room)
Zoom link
About the lecture
AI will soon power our universities, transforming the way we undertake research, educate students, and run our institutions. Early glimpses of this are evident today, but we have only just started to scratch the surface of what AI can do for the sector. In research, there is exciting activity in all areas, from exploring the rights of sentient machines to using novel computational techniques to discover new drugs and materials. In education, there has long been the tantalizing promise that AI will personalize the learning experience, tracking individuals’ progress and presenting content and assignments tailored to particular learning styles and abilities. This bespoke offering would operate at a scale far beyond what is available at any university today. Possibly the least explored question is how AI can improve how universities operate. Turning first to students, AI assistants have significant opportunities to amplify (human) personal tutors by identifying relevant course options, based on the millions of data points generated by their individualized learning journeys. AI could also highlight and schedule interesting extra-curricular activities and opportunities, as well as keep an eye on mental health and well-being. For staff, AI could automate routine tasks. It could also help discover and summarize relevant educational material and suggest collaborations with relevant researchers working in adjacent or complementary fields.
About Nick Jennings
Prof. Jennings, CB FREng FRS, is the Vice-Chancellor and President of Loughborough University. Before that, he was the VP for Research and Enterprise at Imperial College London, the UK’s first Regius Professor of Computer Science (a post created by the monarch to recognize research excellence) and the UK Government’s inaugural Chief Scientific Advisor for National Security. Jennings is an internationally recognized authority in the areas of artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and cybersecurity. His research focuses on how to endow individual autonomous agents with the ability to act and interact in flexible ways and with effective engineering systems that contain both humans and software agents.
Click here for his full bio.
