As some college graduates boo AI, MSU Denver professor says students need more guidance - Denver7

DENVER — College graduates have booed commencement speakers discussing the power of artificial intelligence at schools like the University of Arizona and the University of Central Florida this spring. Denver7 spoke with a professor at Metropolitan State University Denver about the trend.

Executive Director of Online Learning Sam Jay is an AI expert, but he said student have a right to be frustrated by the current conversation around the technology and the implications it has of reshaping the economy and job market.

"It's being told, ‘You have to use this,’ without any sort of guidance, and they just want guidance," Jay explained. "Hopefully, the next six to eight months, we'll start seeing some really big efforts across institutions, across high schools, to be more proactive and be more thoughtful, be more organized, and how we're teaching students how to use these tools."

Jay said students understand the importance of AI and are "thirsty for knowledge," but there also "needs to be significantly more guidance" for students.

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"I think they have every right to expect us to wrap our heads around this before we come to them and start teaching it to them," Jay told Denver7. "We're not taking a systematic or organized approach to educating our educators on this. And I think we'll get there. That's not a critique. I think it's just the nature of a technological advancement, but I think students are just overwhelmed by the AI conversation. And that pushback, that cynicism, it just seems to be natural."

Jay also said that was the majority sentiment in an MSU Denver survey he helped conduct last year, which had about 2,500 student responses. Jay said he's "excited" to take on the challenge of improving AI education in higher education and beyond.

"If you have the basics of critical thought, discernment and argumentation and challenging ideas and doing research and all this — and once you have those basics — these [AI] tools become extremely valuable."