On Aug. 13, the University of Nevada, Reno sent out an email to students and faculty announcing a new initiative: ‘PACK AI’.
The announcement email said that the initiative will focus on teaching academic faculty how to implement artificial intelligence into their classrooms while concurrently educating students about AI tools.
The email also mentions that Nevada Online is in the process of creating a generative AI certificate with three courses.
Additionally, the Nevada Teaching Excellence Program will be providing workshops for faculty on incorporating AI in their courses and the Office of Research and Innovation will have faculty share their experiences with AI to enhance research.
However, it is unclear to what extent the University is implementing AI into its class curriculums and day-to-day services.
The ASUN senate expressed concerns as to what role PACK AI has at the University through their Aug. 20 agenda, where they requested for the University to present on what PACK AI is before its official execution. The original document also raised issues regarding data privacy issues and the dangers of relying on AI tools.
The resolution S.R. 93, spearheaded by Parliamentarian Jason Issa, was originally entitled ‘A Resolution to Oppose the Mandatory Integration of PACK AI into Academic Curriculum’ but was renamed on Sept. 10. Issa said the resolution was updated to address concerns the senate had with the original request with its “verbage as well as the name of it.” However, it still maintains its request for transparency from the University’s administration.
The resolution also noted confusion and outrage amongst students about the sudden rolling out of the initiative.
Issa said the senate was unclear if the University wanted to “use AI to format the [class] curriculum instead of having the traditional human aspect in the classroom.”
“We don’t really know if this is going to be sustainable in the long term, and if students are going to end up paying for PACK AI, which, frankly, students did not ask for,” Issa continued, additionally noting, “There’s the environmental concerns as well.”
As the ASUN senate works towards understanding the initiative, the University is actively building out its generative AI certificate.
Carly Ries, vice provost of Online Learning, is working alongside her team to create the program, leading AI education for UNR students.
“We are mirroring the certificate that is offered at the University of Florida, because they’re quite successful in leading the nation in many ways in AI,” Ries said.
The University of Florida (UF) has a three-course program called the AI Learning Academy that offers the exact same courses Nevada Online will offer.
The first course would be an introduction to AI to demystify it, Lyndsay Munro says. The other two courses discuss separately the ethics of using AI and its potential applications. The ethics course will be taught by UNR philosophy professor Jason Fisette.
Munro, a chemistry professor at UNR, is currently in training to aid in creating the course, but has been using AI in her classroom for a while with tools such as Notebook LM and by having students use models like ChatGPT to further probe class material. Her experience has allowed her to work on developing the courses.
“It’s very fundamental, like starting literally with ‘what is AI, what can it do, what can it not do?’” Munro said about the first course in the certification.
“I think just educating individuals in higher ed, all parties involved, is very important because higher ed struggles sometimes to stay at the same pace as technology,” Ries said. “It pivots so fast”.
Ries provided an example of what she hopes to see in AI usage at UNR.
According to Ries, a faculty member permanently lost his voice due to an illness. Instead of having a robotic AI voice do the lessons, Ries said, “We were able to take a recording of his voice when he had his voice, placed it in AI, have his family and him review over how it sounds, and make a lecture with him speaking once again.”
“That gives me chills. Like, that is an amazing use of AI,” Ries said, further elaborating how grateful the family was to be able to hear the faculty member’s voice again.
Still, there are many concerns that may come about from AI usage in an academic setting that some faculty members and students express.
Munro notes that a concern for students “might be bypassing levels of knowledge that they need to know foundationally in order to be an expert in their field.”
To her, it is a manageable concern by just having a conversation with students about when to use AI and why it can’t be used in certain scenarios. It is about understanding when AI would complement a certain task and when not to use it.
When it comes to critical thinking concerns, Ries cites “Packback” as an AI tool that claims to enhance critical thinking. Ries explains one example is uploading a rubric and having Packback give real time feedback to students by telling them whether they are following the rubric or not, making them put more effort into writing a well-thought-out response.
“When the calculator came out, mathematicians had to change,” Munro said. This is another advancement in technology where we must think about education and how we are teaching students in a different way that allows students to think critically even in the presence of AI.”
Alongside academic concerns, local environmental activist groups and students have cited the environmental impacts that AI can have with the amount of energy and water it consumes.
In response, Munro said, “I’m a university professor, and my role in my job is to make sure that our students are educated in a way that prepares them for the workforce. I am not going to stop AI from being a part of the world. I have no control over whether AI exists or not.”
“I’m obviously aware that there are environmental implications, and I think those are important,” Munro said, arguing, “There’s also environmental implications on the fact that we all have a cell phone, and people are okay with that.”
Ries agreed and stated, “We’d be doing a disservice if we were not educating students around generative AI.”
Despite the desire to prepare students, concerns still arise for local environmental group Reno Sunrise Movement (RSM) about the more damaging aspects of AI with how it can specifically impact Reno and the surrounding Truckee-Meadow area.
Regarding the roll out of PACK AI, Lauryn Kern of RSM said, “We don’t have the climate capacity for that, and I don’t think that in a place like a school where creativity is supposed to be at its highest, you need to be implementing AI where they should be thinking for themselves.”
OpenAI has stated that it has interest in building data centers in 16 states, one being Nevada. According to the MIT Technology Review, Microsoft acquired a chunk of land in Silver Springs, Nevada. Apple also has plans to expand its own data center here in Northern Nevada.
Kern emphasized that the reason why RSM cares about data centers and AI is how environmentally unfriendly they are to deserts, as they use vast amounts of water in their cooling systems.
“These computers get so hot and emit so much heat, they have to be cooled down somehow just like you have fans in your computer. This cooling method, evaporating, is the most energy efficient. However, in dry climates, it’s the most water intensive, which is why it’s banned in Vegas.”
RSM has done lectures on data centers with fact sheets publicly available to those wanting to learn more about their environmental impacts.
“I think that the best thing that people can do right now is educate themselves,” Kern said. “Whether that’s talking to their friends, talking to organizations in this community, whether that’s doing their own research and formulating their own opinion on these things.”
