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    Eden Prairie Local News
    Home»Business»Technology»Town hall event addresses AI ‘hype, harm, or hope’ in context of education, work, and daily life
    Technology

    Town hall event addresses AI ‘hype, harm, or hope’ in context of education, work, and daily life

    Joanna Werch TakesBy Joanna Werch TakesOctober 28, 2023Updated:December 27, 20236 Mins Read
    AI town hall panelists on stage, Central Middle School Performing Arts Center
    An Oct. 26 town hall event focused on artificial intelligence included panelists and subject matter experts from the Eden Prairie community and beyond, including ChatGPT. Photo by Jeremy Peyer

    Panelists, subject matter experts, and Eden Prairie community members convened this week for a discussion of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impacts – current and potential – on our lives. 

    Moderator Ken Stone displays the results of an audience poll on whether attendees’ personal feelings toward AI were closer to hope, harm, or hype. Photo by Jeremy Peyer

    The town hall-style event, titled “AI: Hype, Harm, or Hope?” asked participants to weigh in via interactive polls at the beginning and the end of the event on which of the three options best described their personal feelings about AI. The number of participants choosing “hope” for their poll response at the end of the event increased from the results of the poll at the beginning of the event, with fewer people choosing “harm.”

    Hosted by Eden Prairie Local News (EPLN) and the Eden Prairie Chamber of Commerce, the event began with a brief introduction to the workings of AI from Alok Gupta, senior associate dean of faculty, research, and administration at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. 

    Screen projection of diagram explaining "how does generative AI work" from AI town hall
    Following an introduction by Mouli Venkatesan, chief information officer of event sponsor Optum, Alok Gupta of the University of Minnesota attempted to explain the mechanical workings of machine-learning-based intelligence and its reliance on language and contextual relationships. Photo by Dave Lindahl

    Gupta’s explanatory diagrams were supplemented later in the event with an analogy from Justin Grammens, founder and CEO of software development company Lab 651. Grammens compared existing search engines, such as Google, to a librarian who points you to existing books and resources without offering opinions, only directions. In contrast, AI can be likened to a librarian who has absorbed all the books and resources and acts more as a conversational partner.

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    Moderator Ken Stone, a media consultant and former Twin Cities Public Television anchor and reporter, brought AI into the conversation on Thursday night, asking ChatGPT to respond, in 100 words or less, to questions such as how AI could be used to protect against cyberattacks, or how AI could address ethical concerns of its use. (ChatGPT’s noncommittal responses mentioned things like flagging unusual activity as part of cyber attack prevention, and humans safeguarding ethical behavior.)

    Panelists: AI impact on schools, work, everyday life

    Panelists Heather Mac Murray, Steve Grove, and Arun Batchu spoke about the impact of AI on three areas: schools, the workplace, and everyday life. 

    Mac Murray, director of learning analytics, data, and reporting for Eden Prairie Schools, stated the district recently formed a task force to discuss AI in the schools. The questions the district is attempting to address, she said, include what students need to know about AI and what they need to be able to do; how teachers can use AI and what technology they need to do so; and what policies and procedures the district needs to have in place.

    Teachers’ opinions on AI, Mac Murray said, are reflective of the community and run the gamut from excited hope to a “not in my classroom” view of the technology as harmful.

    AI town hall panelists Heather Mac Murray, Steve Grove and Arun Batchu sitting at table on stage.
    Panelists addressing AI’s impact on schools, the workplace, and everyday life included Heather MacMurray, director of learning analytics, data, and reporting at Eden Prairie Schools; Steve Grove, Star Tribune publisher and former Minnesota economic development commissioner; and Arun Batchu, software engineering analyst at Gartner. The moderator also posed some audience questions to ChatGPT. Photo by Jeremy Peyer

    Grove is the publisher of the Star Tribune, Minnesota’s former commissioner of employment and economic development, and a former executive at Alphabet’s Google.

    He expressed his opinion that AI could be a way of addressing workforce labor shortages, particularly in Minnesota, while acknowledging that this would likely have a disproportionate impact on certain jobs and populations. Grove also expressed his hope that news organizations and technology companies would work together as AI develops to find a model that provides financial benefit to both types of companies.

    Journalists’ job, Grove said, is to deliver “truth and accuracy,” and if news organizations have no financial incentive to allow their content to be included in AI databases, it will devalue those databases.

    Attendees of AI town hall mingling in lobby of Central Middle School Performing Arts Center
    A social hour in the lobby of the Central Middle School Performing Arts Center provided opportunities for continuing discussions on AI, and for attendees to receive the Halloween cards panelist Arun Batchu created using AI assistance. Photo by Dave Lindahl

    Arun Batchu offered an “everyday life” perspective on AI. While Batchu serves as a vice president and analyst in the software engineering practice at technology research firm Gartner, Inc., his presentation centered on his personal AI experiences.

    These ranged from using predictive text on his smartphone; seeking AI assistance for ingredient substitutions in his kitchen, especially when he found himself missing an ingredient for a curry; leveraging AI to design Halloween and Diwali cards in a Japanese manga style; to searching for specific content within a PDF.

    Despite his wide-ranging examples of AI use, Batchu said, “This is not the end game. The end game is saving (people from) cancer.” He also noted, “The next generation of kids are going to be AI natives.”

    AI perspectives: ‘buddy in your pocket’ to concerns for humanity’s future

    Subject matter experts, in addition to Grammens who extended his librarian analogy to having an “AI buddy in your pocket,” included Jody Carey, owner and entrepreneur of Jody Carey Copywriting, and Steve Reinhardt, director of software strategies at Transform Computing.

    Although originally a reluctant user of AI, Carey said she now uses several features and views it as an evolution of creative tools. She likened it to the evolution of graphic designers progressing from using tools such as X-Acto knives and small bits of paper to using Adobe products such as Photoshop.

    “Will AI replace creatives? I don’t think that’s possible,” Carey said. “It’s our creativity that’s going into it.”

    AI town hall subject matter experts Justin Grammens, Steve Reinhardt and Jody Carey sitting at table on stage.
    Town Hall panelists included Justin Grammens, founder and CEO of Lab 651, Steve Reinhardt, director of software strategies at Transform Computing, and Jody Carey, owner of Jody Carey Copywriting. Photo by Jeremy Peyer

    Reinhardt’s presentation focused on current and potential drawbacks of AI, including the question of whether the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) would pose a threat to humanity’s existence, AI’s high proportion of electricity and energy consumption, and its reflection of existing biases, as demonstrated by facial recognition software functioning much better for white male faces than for Black females, for instance. “We need to prepare for both the good and bad of human nature,” Reinhardt said.

    Approximately 150 people registered for the event, held at the Performing Arts Center of Central Middle School, with the audience submitting questions during the event and continuing discussions regarding AI during a social time in the lobby afterward.

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