UNM hosts first-ever 'AI summit'

A panel of professors discussed the evolution of artificial intelligence and its impact on education and research during the University of New Mexico’s first-ever AI Summit on Monday.

The panel of three was moderated by Melanie Moses, professor in the department of computer science, in the Centennial Engineering Center.

“You will hear quite a bit more of research going on here where the technologies are really making possible things that people thought would have been impossible just a few years ago,” Moses said. “On the other hand, some of these disruptions are dangerous, and there are threats to privacy.”

She said AI is changing the nature of warfare, transforming the economy and the way society communicates.

“It’s one thing to tell people, ‘Well, your factory job is going to go away, so we’ll retrain you and you’ll do something else.’ That’s bad enough,” Moses said. “The idea of telling the artist, ‘Your art is no longer needed. We have machines to make that.’ Right? Those are really threats to what’s happening.”

Moses asked students and faculty in attendance to think about the “incredible power we have to transform” science, technology and medicine versus “the real risks that we’re facing.”

“I’m hoping our experts are going to walk us through this and give us, at least, some ideas to move forward,” she said.

David Perkins, professor of medicine and director of the Center for Personalized Health at UNM, said there is “a tremendous amount of interest and enthusiasm” around AI. He likened the technology to the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903.

“They totally changed our way of life,” Perkins said, “and the analogy is, is AI at that same stage? That it’s going to be exploding and challenging us. I sort of tend to think that’s the way we’re headed.”

He said it is difficult to teach AI in medicine because biologists, for example, are not typically trained in computer science. But when he was teaching at the University of Chicago, his research team was composed of computer scientists, engineers and biologists.

“You put that all together and we found that very productive in terms of adjusting medical problems, health care problems, etcetera,” Perkins said.

Trilce Estrada is an associate professor of computer science whose research focuses on designing scalable machine learning techniques, which can be applied to automatic decision-making processes.

She likened AI to a forklift, a powerful piece of machinery she believes not everyone should use. Likewise, people who are interested in AI should know how to use it, Estrada said. She talked about the democratization of AI, the process of making its tools and technologies more accessible and usable by a wider range of people.

“AI should not be democratized (by) inception,” Estrada said. “But the benefits of AI should be democratized. People should be very well trained. Do not use something that you don’t really know how to use.”

She said she is uncertain about the future of AI.

Victor Law, associate professor and program director of the Program of Organization, Information, and Learning Sciences, said he thinks about AI from a computer science perspective and recognizes people are using the technology “very differently to solve the same problems.”

He asked attendees of the AI Summit whether they thought artificial intelligence would hinder students’ ability to learn basic skills, like how to write a paper.

“The question is, today, do we want our students to learn to put that semicolon? Is that important? I don’t know,” Law said. “Maybe there are enough tools that somebody will put it there for us.”

Following the discussion, Moses told attendees she thought this segment of the summit helped students prepare to “leverage the technology (AI) and not be overtaken by it.”

In an interview following the event, Rachel DiPirro, a Ph.D. student studying electrical engineering, said AI is relevant to her research and how she is learning in the classroom. ChatGPT and CoPilot are two AI-operated programs she uses.

DiPirro said AI has its benefits such as allowing her to be more productive in her studies.

“But also as they mentioned in the panel, sometimes the struggle is in learning. You want to make sure you’re learning and get value out of what you’re doing,” she said.

DiPirro said the benefits of AI outweigh the risks, which she believes can sometimes be overblown.

“If it was going to destroy us, then what’s the point of it? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that dire of a situation,” she said. “We’ll always find a way to adapt and learn more from it.”

Moses said in an interview that the AI Summit was born out of her work as assistant to UNM’s vice president for research. The all-day event included not just the panel discussion, but research presentations by faculty, one-minute “lighting talks” and a poster session. One hundred and seven people registered for the summit, but organizers had to cap the attendance because of the size of the room it was in.

Editor's note: This story was corrected to reflect the name of the AI program ChatGPT.