College Grads Should Embrace AI - Not Fear It

Mira Lalovic - Hand, Senior Vice President and CIO, Rowan University

Mira Lalovic - Hand, Senior Vice President and CIO, Rowan University

Many of the college graduates who finished their degree this spring started their journey in higher education just a few months before a pandemic disrupted the global economy and shuttered their schools. During their time in college, they faced unprecedented challenges, and they held on and prevailed. Three years later, we are getting ready to send them to their first professional jobs, and, yet again, they are facing uncharted territory. They are entering a workforce on the verge of another upheaval — this one driven by technology.

ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications introduced in the last year are poised to upend the status quo. Depending on who you talk to, this latest technological advancement may ultimately lead to an idyllic future that frees humanity from repetitive and undesirable work, giving us the time to explore creative and philanthropic pursuits, or a dystopian one where machines control humanity a la The Matrix. The truth is always somewhere in between. Always.

The conflicts between the perceived risks and rewards of new technology are not new ones. Similar arguments were had when gas-powered cars, alternating current, airplanes, the internet, and DVRs were first introduced. What’s new today is the implications of new technologies for the role of humans in the job market, as well as the generated “realities” that AI could infuse in our lives. Technologies like ChatGPT have the power to reshape how we approach every interaction and work activity in ways previous technologies did not.

That makes it both a promising and perilous time for anyone in the workforce, but particularly for those who are just starting out. Generative AI platforms are already impacting the job search process and long-term career prospects, and it hasn’t even been a year since OpenAI publicly announced ChatGPT to the world. To illustrate how transformative and lightning speed this new technology has been, let's just mention that the CEO of Open AI was invited to testify on the Capitol Hill on May 16 of this year. It took about 10 years before the CEO of Facebook was invited to discuss his industry’s issues in front of Congress. What will the job market look like five to 10 years from now, and how will a person starting their first job today fit into that future?

While those questions may be daunting, they are ones that higher education must tackle, and ones that we must give our students the ability to repeatedly answer, as we prepare them for a lifetime of continuous technological disruption. The world will change — again and again — and college graduates must be ready to harness the power of generative AI and other new technologies to thrive professionally, and personally, in the decades ahead. So, how do we teach the future workforce to embrace, rather than fear, new technologies like AI?

"Universities must reshape the educational experience to prepare students for the next technological disruption — and the one after that."

We can start by changing the way we approach education. A four-year degree is not enough to carry someone from entry-level work to the C-suite anymore. Education must be cyclic. It must be adaptive. It must be agile. Through focused programs like microcredentials and workforce-related certificates, we can help those looking for their first job, or looking for their next job, to quickly identify and respond to market needs.

Universities also need to package their credentials to be workplace applicable and effective right away. They need to be able to equip students with multiple skills, the most important of which include: critical thinking, communication, emotional intelligence, fiscal responsibility, conflict resolution, and ethics combined with technological acumen.

When you ask ChatGPT why college graduates should embrace technologies like itself, it says that AI is “not designed to replace humans, but rather to augment their capabilities.” And, there, ChatGPT has a solid point. There are many challenges awaiting our graduates. The road to progress is never straight or easy, but it is worthwhile. AI, in general, and generative AI, in particular, has the potential to cut back the time you spend on repetitive tasks to allow you to focus on more creative or strategic goals. Like any other technology, you can harness AI to empower yourself. That’s the lesson we need to instill in college graduates, and we can do so by rethinking the higher education experience and looking beyond the traditional four-year degree.