Thoughts on AI: A Message From Dean Randolph
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Dear Weinberg College colleagues and students, This year we celebrate the College’s and the University’s 175th anniversary. Such milestones prompt reflection about the past, heightened attention to the present, and speculation about the future. While history is rife with examples of humans under- or overestimating the impact of various events and technologies, it is impossible not to feel that the rapid appearance, adoption, and evolution of artificial intelligence represent something dramatically transformational. Listening to community members from across the College discuss AI and its implications, it is clear we need to lean into our inherent pluralism: no single response to this technology as it meets our curriculum, research, and operations is sufficient. We must welcome and honor thoughtful skepticism, support those who wish to develop and apply AI with meaningful resources and frameworks, and evaluate this technology’s impact, positive and negative, using the rigorous tools and methods of scholarship. That said, I believe firmly that at Weinberg College, Northwestern University, and indeed in political chambers around the world, we must define principles addressing this technology that are rooted in our values. We have a responsibility to employ our judgment, creativity, and ethics based on our experiences and our humanity as we develop policies that anticipate challenges and promote successful adoption. I would like therefore to sketch out for you five principles, from which we in the Office of the Dean have derived some actions. This set of principles is a work in progress. Given the rapidity with which the AI environment is evolving, we need to hold fast to some structures but also ensure that they are adaptable. Artificial intelligence is not a tool; it is an agent. In the processes of learning and knowledge generation, and in creative endeavors, the use of AI is to be considered akin to working with an agent and therefore requires citation and acknowledgment. With a desire for clarity and fairness, we developed Principles and Guidelines regarding AI and academic integrity. These focus on students’ academic work but are the basis for a broader approach to such matters across the College. A related principle follows from this. Assessment of academic work should prioritize process over product. At Weinberg College, students are invited to develop the skillset and mindset that lead to great results. They do so, however, through intense observation, critical reflection, and persuasive communication. We measure success not only through results but also through the pathways taken to those results. In a community like ours, deeply engaged with and dependent upon creative discovery, it is preferable to use AI agents in a legally protected space. This summer, we decided to purchase a license for our faculty and staff to access Anthropic’s Claude; this complements our existing access to Microsoft’s Copilot. We did so as a determined step toward an institutional approach to AI that values our work and our intellectual property. To identify the most productive ways to work with AI agents (and determine when to avoid them), we aim to do so knowledgeably. We witness too often the truth of Charles Darwin’s punchy claim that “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” We must hire more experts in this area, develop curriculum in both foundational and applied AI, and seed new initiatives that will explore how to use AI effectively. Some results of this approach may be found on our AI in the Arts & Sciences website. There you will find courses that tackle the intricacies of building AI models, the ethics of AI, and policy-making around its implementation. New initiatives — AI in the Mind Sciences (AIMS), HumAIn, and AI Impact Evaluation — will apply the expertise of scholars across the College to assess our relationship with this technology. Moreover, a set of grants encourages instructors to explore new ways to use these agents in their teaching. The goal is to explore this subject as we do others, with rigor and tenacity. Whether we choose to use these agents or limit their use, we will do so through understanding not ignorance. Putting humanity first, we aim to highlight the distinctive ethics that emerge from our condition as living beings in relation to our habitats. This aligns with our belief in the virtues of a residential College experience and of face-to-face communication. Putting humanity first lies at the core of an arts and sciences education, the value of which rests less upon the transfer of information than its transformation through creation and collaboration. A leitmotif that runs through these principles is creativity. In his book Serious Creativity, psychologist Edward de Bono wrote that “without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.” Patterns are important, and human pattern recognition is essential to our achievements and survival. Moreover, much of what we do in the academy depends upon our discernment of patterns. However, at a college such as ours, it is our responsibility to strike a balance between the vertical axis of hard-edged pattern recognition and the horizontal axis of what de Bono famously labeled “lateral thinking.” As we reflect on the past 175 years, my hope is that we can celebrate the ways in which the College and University honor the potent alchemy at the intersection of these axes. Best regards, Adrian Randolph Dean HW Rogers Professor of the Humanities Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences |