Generative AI will flood the internet, warns university provost
Florida university leaders have been meeting to discuss ways of using AI to improve their institutions, while reducing the opportunity for academic malfeasance, CBS News reported.
University of Florida Provost Joe Glover last week asked the school’s board of trustees to “pay attention” to developments in generative AI, like ChatGPT.
“This is an important new technology. It will totally disrupt higher education,” Glover told the trustees. “… It needs a validation ecosystem, which people are working on now. It needs development and collaboration with subject-matter experts. It needs ethics, security and policy built around it.”
A recent survey found that one third of university students are using ChatGPT to assist with their homework assignments. Some universities have attempted to detect the use of generative AI, but most algorithms used to detect it aren’t accurate.
The University of Florida is engaged in AI research using its supercomputer, HiPerGator. Public-private partnerships involving AI now include more than 100 faculty members and 6,000 students enrolled in AI classes, according to the university. The university also recently proposed a new Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence Systems.
Glover warned in his notice to the board that the widespread use generative AI will change the information landscape.
“There is going to be so much content generated on these generative AIs, that it will flood the web, and it will become unreliable and untrustworthy. You’ll have some generated by people on the right, some generated by people on the left. Some promoting vaccines, some by anti-vaxxers. And so, people will lose confidence in it,” he said.
