Event Moment: Chapman University’s Marshall Toplansky on Concerns of AI and Lack of Context in Higher Education

In this moment, excerpted from the session “Fireside Chat with Marshall Toplansky & Bob Evans,” Marshall Toplansky, Innovation Professor, Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University, shares his main worries about AI in education, as it can provide answers but often lacks context.

Key Takeaways

• Worries of AI: An aspect of AI that Toplansky considers is the “worrying side of AI.” While AI provides a great catalog of knowledge, solely learning from AI can have a negative impact, as it can output knowledge with little to no context for that knowledge.
• Prior concerns: Initially, universities were worried about plagiarism with the introduction of AI. However, that hasn’t been as common an occurrence, from Toplansky’s perspective.
• Gaining context: A pattern that Toplansky has recognized is that there’s a fairly obvious pattern to the answers from AI. “If you are a critical thinker and you can use the AI as a way of stimulating your own thinking, [that’s] just terrific,” he says. “But you have to go to the next step” to understand context.