The Department of English and Foreign Languages at Central University of South Bihar organized a special invited lecture on the topic, “Learning How to Think (for Yourself) in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” by Dr. Patrick Corbett from New York City College of Technology, Brooklyn, New York, USA. The fundamental idea behind organizing this lecture was to understand many aspects of artificial intelligence, its evolution, as well as its proper application through human intelligence.
The session commenced with a formal felicitation of the resource person by Professor Vipin Kumar Singh, Dr. Archana Kumari, and Dr. Arpana Jha. Miss Diksha, the compere, requested the Head of the Department Professor Vipin Kumar Singh for the welcome address. Afterwards, Dr. Sunil Kumar introduced the resource person to all the faculty members and participants.
Dr. Patrick began his discussion with the relevance of meaning-making through AI and how the production of meaning is fundamental to humanists. He discussed the question of whether the meaning produced and work done by humans is equivalent to that of AI. He continued that AI cannot replace the vital role humanists play in education. He emphasized that by leveraging technology, and tools, we can focus on the meaningful aspects of the work and achieve greater impact by improving productivity and time utilization. AI can produce desired results, but in order to achieve them, we need to rearrange it by extracting the most useful to meet our end goals. To support his argument, he also referred to the philosophies of Plato and Friedrich Nietzsche. He also addressed the challenges of fear and influence that some people encounter when adopting AI, compared to those who see it as beneficial and virtuous. He emphasized the areas in which AI is present and how it uses us and how we use it, adding, “AI won’t replace people, but people who use AI will replace other people.”
He concluded his talk with four essential things we must do in our daily lives to keep us from overindulging in artificial intelligence while also stopping us from worrying about the repercussions, which are: creativity, storytelling, play and epistemological pluralism. Mr. Rangalal, Miss Puja, Mr. Piyush, Miss Diksha, Mr. Ahmed, Miss Suman, Mr. Rahul, Dr. Firdaus Rizvi, Dr. Rachna Srivastav asked about the uses of AI and its reliability in academics. Dr. Sunil Kumar queried about how to remain unbiased regarding AI and shared his views on humanoids. At the end of the session, Miss Diksha requested Dr. Suresh Kurapati to present a vote of thanks. Dr. Suresh Kurapati thanked the resource person, Dr. Patrick Corbett for helping us in learning the various facets of AI, the Head of the Department of English, Professor Vipin Kumar Singh, for his valuable guidance and support, Professor Ravi Kant, the Head of the Department of Teacher Education, for providing with the auditorium for the lecture, the convenor, Dr. Sunil Kumar, for his active efforts in arranging the session, and all the participants for their active participation and for making the lecture session a grand success.
