Artificial intelligence is transforming the way we work and live, creating new AI jobs and reshaping education. Hetq talks with Chris Cooney, an AI educator and Associate Professor of Management at Washington State University, to discuss these changes.

What is it like to be an AI educator and what does it mean? 

To me, what an AI educator means is simply someone willing to experiment with having AI be a part of the learning experience for our students. In the Carson College of Business, where I teach, we've adopted a stance on AI that it is part of the toolset that our students are going to need and the skill set that they need to be successful in the future of business. An AI educator is someone who understands that and is willing to, again, experiment with it, try it out, and work with students as they discover what's possible with AI and see the potential that it represents for them.

Can you specify what you teach your students and what tools you find that everyone should know?

At Washington State University, I teach a number of classes. The one where I use AI the most is my entrepreneurial marketing class. I also use AI in other classes I teach. However, in the entrepreneurial marketing class, which is a senior-level class typically taken in the third or fourth year, I use a lot of AI.

This fits well because in this class students need to develop a new idea for a mobile app. They have to come up with an entrepreneurial idea that ultimately takes the form of a mobile app. The tool that I have found really useful is simple text-based prompting, such as Google Gemini or ChatGPT. Of course, they can do more with these tools, but we start by using them for brainstorming. Those are the tools I use, and the purpose we start with is brainstorming ideas for a new concept.

Is AI making students more creative?

I think AI has the potential to help students realize their potential. I think as human beings, we are all creative people; we are all creative beings, right? We have creativity in us, and it's something that we can express to different degrees.

Using AI enables students to get past points at which they might otherwise get stuck. If I were to ask you today to come up with a business idea, right, and do it for something that you care deeply about, your first step before ChatGPT might be to write down some ideas, or maybe go out on Google and search what's been done, or maybe think about the kinds of people that you'd want to serve with a new app. That process would vary for you, but what you'd really be doing is exploring—exploring potential ideas and exploring things that you could do. So, to me, what AI, generative AI specifically, enables students to do is to perform that exploration in a more efficient way.

Are your students interested in AI, and how do you ensure that they're using it for good?

I would say students are interested in using AI for a number of reasons. Part of it is just curiosity. Unfortunately, some students also see the potential to be able to get information in a quicker way and get things done in a quicker way, just for the sake of getting them done.

What I try to teach is to use it as a tool for exploration and to not just see it. Yes, use it as a way to get things done to create efficiencies, but ultimately don't see it as just a way to finish something—use it as a way to explore something and maybe get an idea out that otherwise you wouldn't. And then use your own brain and maybe even potential input from other people, whether it be team members or potential clients, to make that idea better. And then maybe go back to ChatGPT and work on it.

I think students' interest in AI is not necessarily always what they have in mind. It might start with them seeing something cool, like a video that someone's created using AI, and they say, "I never even knew that was possible," or an image that they created. But then, to be able to put it in a framework—in my case, a marketing plan or a marketing strategy or a new product—to be able to show them they can do that same level of exploration but actually have an outcome that has a real application. It could even turn into a real business. I like the process of turning their initial interest in things like ChatGPT and MidJourney into an actual product, into an actual thing that they could use, that they're making money with.

Many lecturers don't want their students to use AI, but you're encouraging them to use it. Why?

At any institution, there are going to be faculty members who want their students to use AI and others who are more apprehensive. If that's their perspective, I respect that. But in what I teach, often what is standing in their way isn't mastering something or memorizing something. What's standing in their way is getting started. What's standing in their way is trying something out. What's standing in their way is understanding a big picture or a structure that might take me a week or two of lectures and a week or two of in-class activities for them to understand.

For me, it makes sense for the topics that I teach and the way that I teach. For others, it might really disrupt the way they teach and the learning objectives they have for their students. As a student, I could see where that could be very difficult to navigate. So I think that's where we're at right now with universities—figuring out not only how we teach but also how we assess what we're teaching our students and the value of that.

How to assess knowledge properly when every student knows how to prompt and how to use AI?

The way we have to adjust the way we assess students' knowledge and their readiness to enter the workforce is changing. AI is really forcing that change. In the past, we could have a student write a paper, and that would be an assessment of their ability to make sense of a topic, to bring together lots of ideas into an original piece of content. Today, AI can do that on its own. And of course, we've seen the results of that, right? When a student uses AI and doesn't edit it, it becomes obvious.

Looking beneath that, to understand what they're trying to do with that assessment is essential. They're trying to determine if a student understands the material and can go through the process of not only understanding and memorizing it but also coming up with a creative new idea. The challenge is if there's an easier path that doesn't require memorization, research, or even defining a structure for a document or a marketing plan, we need to focus on how students use that structure and knowledge to develop new ideas. How do they bring other ideas together in a creative way?

AI has the potential to help with that creative work and the analysis of what they've created. That's challenging, but that's where we're at. As educators, we need to look at how we're assessing student knowledge with an emphasis on their ability to analyze information and come up with new creative ways to use that information. So, I think that's the challenge before us, and it's still emerging as to how we do that.

What do you think the future of AI looks like?

About a year ago, Bill Gates said that AI is not like the PC or a computer chip. When silicon chips were invented, it was not like that. It's more like the steam engine. So not the third industrial revolution, but the first industrial revolution.

We can't imagine what it was like before steam, let alone understand what it was like before electricity or before computer chips, and we all had phones. It's hard for us to remember that. If Bill Gates, who was one of the pivotal figures in the third industrial revolution, is saying this feels more like the first industrial revolution, then what we're going to see is that in every industrial revolution, there was an increase in capacity of what people can accomplish and the pace of that change also increased.

I think what we're going to see in the future of AI is hard to imagine. It would have been impossible for someone at the advent of steam power to imagine what it would be like as we started using cell phones. It's going to challenge our ideas of what it is to be human. It's going to challenge our idea of what it means to gain knowledge. But most importantly, it's going to challenge the ways we stay connected and maintain our humanity. I think it's going to look like change in a way that's hard to comprehend. And I think the way through it is to stay mindful of where we are as human beings and the importance of connection, authenticity, and actually standing for something—having an intention and a purpose for the work that we do.

Do you find what's happening scary or merely challenging?

I mean, just like any change, the initial response is often fear—to recoil, right? It's a natural response. But then, as we grow, we learn to say, "Okay, I'm still here, and I still know the things I know, and I'm still connected with the people around me." So I think the initial response some people might have to what's happening and what the future looks like is fear, but it's the ability to move past that and say, "This is what's happening, so how am I going to engage with this? What choices am I going to make?"

Personally, I don't feel a lot of fear now about it. I'm excited about what's happening. I have concerns about what the future holds, but I've always had concerns about what the future holds. However, I think this is different, and I hope it will require people to work together in ways they haven't before rather than force them further apart. That will help.

Is there something you want to add? 

I feel that right now, being an educator is a time of disruption. The way we do things is changing. Having been through the whole dot-com experience and the rise of social media, I know that this is different. I'm really grateful that this is happening in my lifetime because being an educator at this moment means we get to do new things. We get to make a bigger difference, perhaps, and usher this whole new generation into a world where AI is a part of it. Will AI define it? It will be one of the things that define it, just like everything else.

But it's exciting to be a part of that process from the perspective of an educator because I get to see it through people's eyes, or at least see people experience things like AI and what's possible in a safe place, in an educational context. Here, they can experiment, try new things, move past moments of concern, nervousness, or even fear, and grow confident in their ability to navigate that change.