QAA's Eve Alcock speaks at international AI summit

QAA's Director of Public Affairs, Eve Alcock, has this week spoken at an international summit on artificial intelligence (AI) hosted in Kuwait by the American University of the Middle East, in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley's AMENA Center for Entrepreneurship & Development.

Speakers at the event also included Data Scientific CEO (and Google's former Chief Decision Scientist) Cassie Kozyrkov, Berkeley's Professor Daniel Fletcher and Elsevier Vice President M'hamed El Aisati, as well as Fahad AlOthman, Chairman of the board of trustees of the American University of the Middle East.

The summit explored how AI is reshaping industries and professional practices across the world, and in this context Eve discussed ways in which the higher education sector might anticipate and address the impacts, opportunities and challenges of AI.

Eve stressed that, in order to use this technology ethically and responsibly, we must first properly understand how it works, and therefore emphasised the need to build critical AI literacy among students and teaching staff.

She recommended that, in order to bridge a potential digital divide, institutions should support access to paid-for AI tools, where they can be used to support students in learning and assessment.

Eve pointed out that at its best, Generative AI can democratise learning and facilitate access to it. It can also create efficiencies that free up staff time to afford a focus on more personalised learning and the development of more robust and inclusive academic communities which foster an ethos of belonging, to underpin student engagement and achievement.

She concluded her presentation with some words of advice to leaders in higher education.

'Partner with your students to create the kind of future you want to create,' she said. 'It's their future that's going to be most transformed by this in the long run. They have a wealth of ideas. Student engagement is a value that QAA holds really dear – and it works – so partner with your students now.'

QAA recently launched a new curated resource bringing together a wide range of materials relating to Generative Artificial Intelligence and its uses and impacts across the higher education sector.