Chris Gray, Ph.D.
Founding President, Erie County Community College of Pennsylvania
A few years ago, if you asked me about artificial intelligence, I probably sounded like a kid talking about a new toy. Actually, scratch that. I probably sounded like a college president nerding out at discovering a new tool that could save time and increase productivity. Helping people work smarter, not harder? Yes, please. That's exactly what I thought AI was when this all began, and to be clear, I still think that.
What has changed is not my appreciation for AI and its potential. What has changed for me, though, is my appreciation of just how complicated the conversation has become. The breakneck speed of AI development and adoption has been unlike anything I've ever seen in my career — a career that, spanning nearly three decades, had me convinced that I'd seen it all. Not even close.
From what I've seen so far, it seems that technology usually follows a predictable pattern: early adopters get excited while most people ignore it, and skeptics roll their eyes. Then, eventually, everyone comes around, uses the thing, and pretends they always knew it would be a big deal.
AI skipped several steps in this pattern. Instead, it feels like the world went from "What is ChatGPT?" to "Our entire business strategy depends on AI" in about fifteen minutes. Remember, it hasn't been even four years since AI as we now know it burst onto the scene. And in that short time, it's almost impossible to avoid AI; you have to work actively to opt out, and even then, it's still there in some way most of the time.
We've also heard from our industry partners that employers are increasingly looking for and expecting people to enter the workforce armed with an understanding of how to use AI tools effectively. Whether students are entering healthcare, manufacturing, business, information technology, logistics, or any of a number of other fields, there is a good chance that AI will be part of their workplace experience.
That reality creates a huge responsibility for colleges because our students need to understand these tools enough to become savvy users. Period. Ignoring AI today would be like ignoring the internet twenty-five years ago. The workforce is moving quickly for that, and we need to ensure that our students can keep up.
At the same time, one of the things I appreciate about many of today's students is that they aren't simply embracing AI blindly. They are asking hard questions, and these are the very questions that need to be asked because there are no easy answers:
- Who owns the information?
- How should AI be regulated?
- What happens to privacy?
- What jobs might change?
- What biases exist within AI systems?
- What are the environmental impacts?
- How secure is information shared with AI?
- What are the implications of outsourcing human intellectual labor to machines?
Those aren't anti-technology questions. They're smart questions. And honestly, they're questions society should probably be asking more often.
Recently, I watched a Netflix documentary that discussed developments in artificial intelligence, including examples involving Hugging Face AI systems and situations in which bots appeared to arrive at unexpected conclusions through logic and language patterns learned from enormous amounts of human conversations. I'll admit that got my attention, and not because I suddenly became convinced the robots are poised to take over.
I've watched enough science fiction to know that's where these conversations usually go, but that's not my point. Instead, what caught my attention was the unexpected nature of it: Very smart people created rules. Very smart people built systems. And then, those same systems occasionally found ways to navigate situations that the humans hadn't anticipated. That's fascinating!
It's also the kind of thing that should make all of us stop for a second and say, "Wait, what? Huh! That's interesting." I'm not saying that we should throw on our tinfoil hats and panic, just that we should pause.
If there's one thing history teaches us, it's that human beings are exceptionally good at creating technologies they don't fully understand until years later. Just look at our history within the last century or so. The automobile transformed society. So did television. So did social media. Every transformational technology creates opportunities and challenges simultaneously; AI appears to be following that same pattern.
This is where I often find myself in an interesting spot. Some people seem to want everyone to choose a side, arguing that AI is either the greatest innovation in modern history or the beginning of civilization's downfall. There's not a lot of people in the middle at this point. And while I can see elements of both positions, I personally think this either/or reasoning is a little too simplistic.
Life is rarely that neat. And if we're being honest, most technologies are neither heroes nor villains: they're tools. The real question is how we use them.
I'm also thankful that I'm not running for public office. Because if I were, I'm confident someone would produce a campaign commercial made entirely from my comments about AI over the past several years. The first half would feature me enthusiastically talking about how transformative AI could become. The second half would feature me discussing sweeping implications, ethical concerns, environmental questions, and regulatory challenges. The narrator would dramatically ask, "Which Christopher Gray should voters believe?" And the answer, of course, would be both because acknowledging complexity isn't inconsistency. It's critical thinking at work, and that is reality.
So where have I landed now in this great AI debate? I remain incredibly optimistic about AI as a tool. I use it. Our institution uses it. Our students need to understand it. The workforce certainly expects it.
But I also think optimism and critical thinking can coexist. In fact, they should. Our mission isn't to teach students to accept every AI-generated response as fact. Our mission is to teach students how to think and to use AI to help when appropriate.
When our students leave EC3, I want them to know how to leverage powerful tools. I also want them to know when those tools are wrong, and I want them to understand how AI can improve efficiency. At the same time, I want them to verify information, challenge assumptions, ask follow-up questions, and be deliberate in their decision-making processes.
Those aren't AI skills; they are life skills. And the more sophisticated technology becomes, the more valuable human judgment is increasingly going to become.
That's ultimately where I land on the issue: neither anti-AI nor blindly pro-AI. Just practical.
AI is here. It's part of our lives. It is becoming part of the workforce, so our students need to know how to use it effectively. At the same time, they need the confidence and critical thinking skills to question and evaluate what they see to ensure the accuracy of their work product.
In other words, we will continue doing what we've always done: preparing students for the world as it is, not as we wish it were. The tools will change. The technology will evolve. And when these inevitabilities occur, the debates will certainly continue.
But through it all, our goal remains the same. We will work to give students the knowledge to succeed. We will help them develop the judgment to think for themselves. And we will help them discover the confidence to know the difference.
Our community. Your college.
