ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — University of North Carolina campuses are continuing to implement artificial intelligence (AI) at their own pace.
The Chapel Hill campus plan has been in place since 2023, while other branches are just starting to scratch the surface — that includes UNC Asheville.
“This is the first class in our department focused with AI,” Mass Communication lecturer Stephanie O’Brien explained. “They’re going to be using it in their daily lives. It’s here to stay.”
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O’Brien is at the head of the first Mass Communication course for UNCA focused on the capabilities of AI in media. Educators are responsible for showing students the positives programs like Sona, Adobe and Chat GPT can provide.
“Text generation, text to image, or text to video — AI can prepare them for their careers,” O’Brien said. “We use it for video editing or cleaning up audio editing. There are normal research tools we use so that we can cross check everything, but still use it as a brainstorming tool.”
However, negatives like plagiarism and cheating are also in play as well.
“They’ll plug something in to get an answer or response and they won’t be learning the subject matter really well,” Carolina Cyber Center senior director Ed Carroll said. “Students will say ‘I’m going to use this instead of going to meet up with a student and collaborating and learning together.’”
As a result, UNCA professors create their own rules when it comes to using the tool.
“I have 100 level classes that I teach where I don’t allow AI,” O’Brien said. “That’s because those are foundational classes. Those are classes where I feel like the students have to understand the foundations of what we’re studying.”
As teachers learn on the fly, they have to steer students toward properly utilizing the tool in the future.
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“It makes me worried,” Carroll said. “It really worries me. You have to cross check. To give students access to immediate answers, I think, can take away from other things they should be thinking about to really grow.”
“It’s a challenge, but I’d say it’s a challenge like any new technology that comes in,” O’Brien said. “They’re still using those foundational skills, but now they have a new tool in their toolbox to help them with that.”
O’Brien added that she’s a part of the AI task force that works with UNCA officials. The two sides are currently discussing the possibility of university-wide AI policies.
