When initial information about the upcoming AI Exploration Day was released, many students questioned and wondered what had happened to their Wellness Day. However, by some miracle, students ended up with five snow days, which turned into more than they had expected.
With this break behind us, it’s now time to focus on what the AI Exploration Day can provide for us. With all classes canceled to make the sessions available to students and non-NJIT-affiliated individuals also trying to secure a seat, this AI Exploration Day is shaping up to be more than the average student expects.
If anything catches your attention, it should be the keynote speaker, Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of the book “Co-intelligence: Living and Working with AI,” and was named one of TIME Magazine’s “Most Influential People in Artificial Intelligence.” It’s safe to say he has built his career around AI, and while you don’t need to agree with him to attend, listen, and learn about what he sees for the future. Another very important session that students should be looking out for is the roundtable, where industry experts will discuss the use of AI in the job market and how students can use this information to stay one step ahead and better prepare themselves when they begin searching for full-time positions.
In between, there will be professor-led sessions, breakout rooms, and student presentations, which can feel overwhelming. After going through the three documents with eight pages of featured and breakout sessions and twelve pages of student poster sessions, there is a lot to digest.
Luckily for us, what better way to approach an AI Exploration Day than to use AI for good — having it sift through all this data and provide a breakdown to help us better navigate the schedule and spend our time finding sessions that will truly interest us. We can feed each of these PDFs into an AI tool and ask it to organize the information into different categories so students can easily find sessions that fit their interests and experience levels.
Ask your favorite AI tool to take in the sessions and categorize them into three groups. Use these categories as baselines to determine what aligns with your interests. Ask AI to prompt you with questions once you narrow down to one or two categories that most appeal to you, to further simplify the list you need to read through. Similarly, provide your level of understanding of AI, machine learning, and use this as a guideline to determine which sessions might appeal to you but also ones that will be matched with your understanding of the material.
Students are at different levels of understanding and usage when it comes to AI, and even if you don’t agree with its use, it would be unrealistic to think we can avoid it entirely. With an ever-changing job market and continuous headlines about layoffs, it only makes sense to learn about the tool and use it sensibly — and this is the perfect opportunity to do so.
