A link to the recording of this event can be found in the previous post.
On 14th December 2023 the BAEF held a webinar discussing the rising use of AI in industry and what we as educators can do to prepare our students for working within environments that use AI systems. The event was well attended, and the four speakers were Marilena Karanika who is Head of Innovation at Experian, Balagopal Madhusoodhanan who, at the time, was Principal Architect, Supply Chain & Intelligent Automation at TJX inc. (now with Chanel), Luke Vilain who is leading UBSs risk assessment for Generative AI, and James Winters who is the AI Ethics and Governance Officer at Deeper Insights. All four have a wealth of experience in using and implementing AI in highly regulated environments, and they are all keen proponents of the ethical use of AI.
The session opened with the guests describing what they do in their jobs and outside of them. The first question focused on what the guests thought that we, as educators, should focus on to reflect the changes brought about by firms integrating AI with their analytics.
·
Bala started off by talking about how the use of
AI assistants can help productivity but cautioned against the tendency to get a
bit carried away with hyping AI up in terms of analytics, when a simpler model would
work instead.
·
James highlighted the need for educators to teach
how AI models work as well as how we can interact with them.
·
Marilena discussed getting the balance right
between using established tools and newer ones, highlighting the importance of
maintaining data integrity across the models used.
· Luke talked about the need to teach how to integrate AI within your workflow, and how it can improve your productivity. He talked about how academics are now using generative AI to develop lesson plans etc. and cautioned that there are no effective systems in place to spot students submitting work done by Chat GPT.
Luke also raised the issue of ethics, in particular how sentiment analysis of social media posts can be used to inform decisions on how the money markets are likely to behave, and how important that is to teach. Bala agreed with the need to teach around the ethics of AI use.
Following on from this question, the next question to the panel was about what sort of skills will be important in the future.
·
Marilena started off by talking about the
importance of being able to get complex ideas across to laypeople and the
development of soft skills. The panel was in broad agreement about soft skills
development.
·
James highlighted how there was a lack of
integration between ethics, compliance etc. and this could be one area for
educators to focus on.
·
Luke also highlighted the compliance aspect and
the importance fully validating AI systems before integrating them into
workflows, documentation and regulatory compliance being important.
· Bala highlighted the value of including people and bearing them in mind when looking at a problem.
The panel then moved on to a broader discussion around the value of providing financial education to the wider public as well as raising awareness of how the economic system works including how organisations use your data about individuals. All the panel members agreed that it was important to train students how to address social problems and develop their problem-solving skills, Bala suggested using hackathons and real-world problems in lessons to develop this skill.
Finally, the panel was asked what one thing should be added to courses tomorrow. Communication skills, governance and compliance, and people skills came out as pertinent additions.
The session could easily have gone on for much longer!
Key takeaways were:
1.
A focus
on the ethics of AI use
2.
How to
regulate AI
3.
The
development of soft skills and problem structuring
4. Raising the awareness of these issues with the wider society
A successful session and one that will no doubt be held again to reflect the rapidly changing environment of AI use.
Author: Dr M.
Chris Davies, Senior Lecturer, Bangor Business School, BAEF founding member.