The
artificial-intelligence (AI) wave isn’t on the horizon; it’s already here, according
to Joseph Qualls, a clinical assistant professor at the Coeur d’Alene branch of
the University of Idaho’s College of Engineering. “You are either going to surf
that wave or it’s going to crash on you,” he told EdTech Magazine: Focus on
Higher Education in a recent Q&A.
Qualls
is also CEO and president of RenderMatrix Inc., a research-and-development
engineering company, and co-founder of Avid Intelligence, which researches and
prototypes AI-focused products for the defense and private sectors.
He
predicts AI applications will cause “massive change” from K-12 to higher ed, creating
a highly personalized, interactive, and faster path forward for each student.
The notion of massive lecture courses and having students all learning the same
material may someday be viewed as “education out of the Dark Ages,” Qualls
said.
In
the long term, “having large universities and large faculties teaching students
is probably going to go away,” he added. Until then—for the next 20 years in Qualls’
estimation—instructors will continue to step in when the AI isn’t ready for the
task at hand. After that, he noted, professors’ roles might change “from
educating a student to educating an AI.”
