President Greg Crawford
Oh, technology. I love it. Oh, my God.

President Greg Crawford
Hello. I'm Greg Crawford, president of Miami University, and welcome to "In Such a Place," the podcast where we explore the future of higher education and the vital role colleges and universities play in shaping our world. Artificial Intelligence is transforming how we live, how we work and how we learn, challenging higher education to prepare students for a rapidly changing world. Joining us today are Beena Sukumaran, our Dean of the College of Engineering and Computing, and Liran Ma, the Chair of Computer Science and Software Engineering, to discuss AI's impact on the classroom and how universities can ensure technology serve society responsibly and effectively. Welcome to the podcast. Beena and Liran.

Liran Ma
Thank you.

Beena Sukumaran
Thank you, President Crawford.

President Greg Crawford
How do you see AI fundamentally reshaping the way we live, work, and learn in the next five to 10 years?

Liran Ma
Yeah, for me, over the next five to 10 years, I think AI will deeply integrate into every part of our lives, affect how we live and work and learn. On their personal life, I think AI will more deliver personal or customized experience, from tailored content to smart healthcare or home monitoring. And on the work level, I think AI is going to replace we're reshaping the repetitive tasks to more automation. More down the line is how the system AI agent work together with human to be more creative, and the learning, to me, is more like personalized learning and adapt learning.

President Greg Crawford
Beena?

Beena Sukumaran
Yeah, for me, when I think about how AI has already shaped our lives, I would talk about, you know, even when we do a search now in any of our internet browsers, it is always the AI-vetted language that you get first, right? So you see that sort of guiding your searches already, and it tells you, I guess, where to shop, what to buy, what we should be thinking sometimes. So I do think it does have real impact on how we live and and I'm even scared to predict what it might look like five to 10 years out, because it is hard to see how this is going to evolve. In terms of work, I'm a civil engineer by training, and when I look at my field, I know I've been away from my field for a little while, but still, when I look at the impact. Ours is still a licensed profession, so we still have to abide by the code, building codes and so on. But you're seeing lots of tasks getting automated, even the way we do a site survey that might change in the future, right? We might not be using some of those tools that we used in the past. It might be more aerial surveys and so on. But I think the biggest impact, at least in my profession, that I'm seeing is in health monitoring of structures, structural health monitoring, whether it be bridges, dams, any of those lifeline structures that we think about, there's lots of embedded sensors in all these structures, especially if this critical to how we move around, you know, and then collecting that data and making sense of it, and even predicting when something might fail or might not fail, when something needs to be repaired. How do we move towards that? And in terms of how we I guess the third question was how we learn, and this, we are already seeing the impact in the classroom with how professors interact with the students and how students use AI tools. I think they look at AI tools as a way to enhance their learning in the classroom, so they're using AI tutors, even though we might not call it that, but AI tutors to assist them in learning some of those fundamental concepts that they need to learn in engineering and computer science.

President Greg Crawford
I think that's great. One of your points too is that even an organization like Miami, a large institution, and we've just gone through a new enterprise system Workday, and I was just impressed by the number of AI engines running in the background.

Beena Sukumaran
Yes.

President Greg Crawford
That we, you know, that we utilize and use, or it helps us predict and forecast, but we don't necessarily intentionally use them.

Beena Sukumaran
Yes.

President Greg Crawford
They're there for us. And as you mentioned, the web behavior is right.

Beena Sukumaran
Yes

President Greg Crawford
can kind of predict what you might be shopping for tomorrow, and those kind of things, but a personal question for you too, why don't you tell us your secret, like, how do you use AI, whether it's in your work or at home?

Liran Ma
So for me, you know, I do some AI research, right? I in the classroom, I started to use AI to give me more ideas. And also sometimes, like you, exam questions, I like AI to do my question first, I want to see whether I missed something or any correction that AI can give me. More recently, I think I want to utilize the power of AI to give students more bigger tasks, because AI you heard from coding the capabilities. I want my student to able to utilize their more advanced power of AI, but also ethical as well.

President Greg Crawford
Beena?

Beena Sukumaran
Yeah, for me, I think I have used AI mostly around communication, checking the tone of my communication, revising something. So it's usually I start with something I have written and then revising it so that it's suitable for certain audiences that I'm facing. So that's where I've mostly used AI. But we are also moving into, can we use AI to operate the college better and more efficiently? So that is where I need some of my colleagues help. I, in fact, gave two senior capstone projects to our students last year, and one was around developing an AI tutor for our entry level classes, like in calculus and physics, and they worked on that for their capstone. And the other one was to have an AI assistant at the entry to the building to answer mundane questions, to direct them to places that visitors might be, you know, are interested in seeing and so on. So.

President Greg Crawford
That's great, fantastic. So when we look at the cutting edge of AI research, what potential is there to transform society, but aren't widely known today?

Liran Ma
So as far as I'm concerned, I think the fusion of quantum AI is a rapid emerging area, but it's less recognized compared to other areas. There may be a number of reasons, because the quantum computer are not available to many people yet, and the quantum itself, the concept, like superposition, entanglement, requires a lot of knowledge, but the magic, or the power of a quantum is so great that can accelerate drug discoveries, you know, accelerated computations, optimization problems, right? So to me, that's an area that really wants attention. That's why Miami, we're focusing on that area, to make our students to be ready and to deliver the cutting edge technology to benefit the society.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, I think that's going to be an exciting area for several fold. One, it can speed things up, of course, because it is a very fast computer. But second of all, too, if something's not calculated quite yet, or the AI doesn't have the information, it can go ask the quantum to calculate it for it, or forecast it for it. So it'll bring in a whole new, brand new dimension.

Liran Ma
Yeah, as you said, because, you know, quantum, because the ability to represent all the data information the same time, actually they can represent information that require much small memory and also more energy efficient in the future.

President Greg Crawford
So Miami, we're a student-first institution. You know, our faculty and staff put their heart and soul into our students. We really want to be that place that that students are prioritized first. So let's talk about the classroom and the experiences of AI and how that may change the classroom experience.

Beena Sukumaran
Yeah, when I think about the classroom experience, and I also think about what Miami has done in this past I guess two years itself, right? There have been lots of workshops that CTE Center for Teaching Excellence has rolled out to prepare, I would say, educators across all our fields to be aI ready. We also have lots of researchers who are in the AI space, so who are engaged in that. So we have researchers that are working together, but working in developing some of these large language models, but also using some of these large language models in educating our students. The, I would say, from the college, our latest endeavor is the B.S. in AI, right? That Liran's department has been responsible for developing, and this is again to develop professionals that have that strong foundation in the, I guess, the crux of AI on how to develop an AI model, but also to have it applied to certain application areas. So Liran, do you want to talk about that degree?

Liran Ma
Sure, yeah. So in the B.S. in AI degree, we focus on, you know, multi fronts, of course, you have the foundation for computing, mathematics, and we have several courses on different era of AI to prepare students to be the future AI developers and leaders. In addition, the B.S. program will also to incorporate AI into other curriculums, because we believe there are AI developers and AI users. I think all students have to be 100% AI users, meaning that they can engage to use AI tools meaningfully and ethically to improve their productivity and unleash their creativity.

President Greg Crawford
Could you, so, I know you you have some new AI degrees coming out, because, you know, we all use a calculator, we always a computer, and now we all use AI so these technology innovations that change lives and change society and so forth. And then ultimately, for AI, somebody has got to create the engine behind it that helps people utilize these And so you mentioned a little bit about the curriculum that you're developing and so forth. But could you also talk a little bit about the type of student that would go into an AI program that would be the developer of AI, what kind of background might they need, and just to give a sense to students out there, maybe thinking about this as a career path?

Liran Ma
Why don't we start with the overall structure of our offerings? Because we're working on multiple fronts for the degree plans. Two years ago, we started the AI minors for people interested AI to just get AI literacy and exposure. Then we offer the general AI certificate for for people you know, want to retooling, wanted to improve the profile to professionals, online degree. Then recently, we have the AI, the B.S. in AI to do the undergraduate level developer. And also where have the PhD approved that has a special, concentrated AI for the AI developer, talking about to be a future AI developer. I think the mathematical skills is a foundation, and also the programming capability. And also, I think also, also very important, is the ethical reasoning, because it's very different from before I read the program. You know, it just affect me, where a few people, but now you're working on AI that have the potential to influence millions of people, right? You don't want to bias where other things affect their well beings. You want to really be careful developing those tools.

President Greg Crawford
Liran, I want to ask you this question. You're a department chair of Computer Science, and so you kind of look at computer science departments out there. And, you know, certainly coding and software engineering have been big, but now you're seeing the growth in computer science departments in AI in quantum computing. You know, they're they're spreading out, and they're using, you know, the computer skills to actually expand and grow into new areas and new technologies. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because now you know, if you look back 10 years, it might have been all computer science, and now you're starting to add to your portfolio, and maybe you can talk through that with our listeners today.

Liran Ma
Sure. I think the last few years with AI and quantum, we do see an expansion of the research area that we never able to done before. For example, one of our faculty is developing a quantum based AI drug discovery, right? Because, you know, the medication that works with the molecules of the human bodies, but because the billions of molecules, it's really hard for the traditional computer to do a simulation. But now, with quantum and AI, we do have the ability to tap into this unsolved problems.

President Greg Crawford
That's fantastic. I just think it's neat to see computer science growing in so many different directions. I just really innovative. And when you see something new, you look at how you your curriculum looks today, and how it can be expanded upon leverage to go into some new fields. And so congratulations on all the great work at Miami.

Liran Ma
Thank you.

Beena Sukumaran
And if I may also add, if you think about the student that comes to Miami, I do think they are positioned so well to go into some of these fields, because the students that we get at Miami usually come in because they've heard about our liberal arts history, and they know that we build on that foundation. So lots of the students that come into engineering and computer science have interests outside the college as well, and I think that lends itself to this kind of a thought process around AI and quantum computing, but also for the future professionals that we want to succeed in these fields.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, that's a great intro to my next question. So we're always talking about training students in transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary ways. And in many ways, it's you know, students that graduate from Miami, they have so many interests, as you mentioned, they they become like, Da Vinci, like, right? They're really good at more than a couple of things. They're really excellent at many. And so when you think about AI, it's probably no different. And I know you've constructed this term AI+X, yes, explain to our listeners what this AI+X means.

Liran Ma
So to me, as Beena mentioned, I think AI is going to make education more class or interdisciplinary, right? So to equip a students for the future-ready jobs, it's not just AI alone. You have to apply AI in certain areas, like a finance, cyber security, quantum education, or

Beena Sukumaran
Philosophy,

Liran Ma
Philosophy, yeah.

Beena Sukumaran
Yeah. So when. I think about it, and I we talk to lots of corporate leaders, right? And all of them are trying to use AI within their organizations to improve either manufacturing or improve chemical processes and so on. But what they say they lack is they usually get the person with that computer science or AI expertise, but doesn't have that domain knowledge right in that particular field. So what we have tried to do with this AI+X is to marry those two skills so that we are graduating students that would be ready from day one to go into, let's say, healthcare right, and figure out what might be a AI problem that the healthcare industry is facing. So they have some knowledge of the healthcare industry, but they also have that foundational knowledge in AI?

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, I think it's brilliant, because it's just when you look at AI, it crosses every single industry, every single job, every single career path, just about everything we do in life. And so it'll be great to really blend those two so they're discipline specific, and then also AI experts.

President Greg Crawford
How do projects like classify and health lit pro demonstrate the potential of AI to address real world challenges beyond the classroom?

Liran Ma
Actually, these two projects are kind of example of interdisciplinary collaborations. So the classify is names classroom AI. He's trying to capture the dynamics in classroom to help teacher to improve the Health Data Patrol is a collaboration between me and a hospital in Dallas trying to monitor the communication between healthcare professionals and the patient to improve the efficiency of communications. To me, this kind of capture of dynamics of conversations were never able to do with human or traditional computers, but with the power of AI now we can tap into the knowledge of the conversation more effectively, more in the real time, and commit it back give actionable feedback to practitioners or teachers to improve their teaching jobs or their communication to the patients.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, that's fantastic. So next question is a high level question. So with AI and quantum computing advancing so rapidly, what skills or ways of thinking should students develop to remain competitive and responsible in these fields and disciplines. And then a follow up question, if you can think about, are there skills or ways of thinking that higher education should emphasize more because of AI?

Liran Ma
To me, I'm from a technical perspective, right? So our department is educating future practitioners in AI and quantum computing, right? To us, there are three foundations. First is the technology skills, right? That means coding mathematics, and also the adaptive thinking, because AI is evolving so fast, you have to adapt to new technology, you know, embracing new ideas or challenges, right? The last one is also very important, because AI and quantum they are such powerful technology can affect our lives. I think the ethical awareness is also a key to our future graduate. So I think in the university, we can focus on, you know, not only technical skills, but also transfer skills like critical thinking, adaptive thinking and ethical religion.

Beena Sukumaran
And if I were to think about this from a big picture viewpoint, I would say these are some of the skills that we have always valued at Miami, like critical thinking, right? Because there is a lot of information in these large language models that might not be true. There is, in fact, we had a capstone project last year working with the corporate entity on detecting deep fakes. And how do you analyze that, right? Or how do you figure out if something is fake or if it's real? I think there'll be a lot of critical thinking that students need to know to assess if the information that they're getting is actually valid. The other thing I would say is it can be used as an assistant, even to foster creativity and innovation that we always talk about here at Miami, you know. So you can use AI as a partner to generate ideas, to think about, explore possibilities, but again, it is not going to be able to do that out of the box thinking that still relies on the human to do that, right? So I think it can be a tool. But. Not going to replace that kind of out of a box thinking,

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, I do agree with you. I think one of the elements that somebody had mentioned to me to try it,

Beena Sukumaran
Yeah.

President Greg Crawford
because I use AI to help me with things that you don't know, or for assistance or help you brainstorm. But somebody said, you know, why don't you interview it and ask it questions that you're an expert in, and then read it. And, you know, sometimes it does quite well, of course, and other times you're like, hmm, yeah. I mean, you just, you got to be able to check this stuff that's, you know, coming out at you from these AI engines. So that's a really great point. I like the the nature of how you imagine it can help you critically think. But you also have to critically think about what it's telling you, to challenge it in some cases, yeah. So we have all kinds of stakeholders here at universities. We have the state, we have industry, we have our communities that we live in, we have our students, of course, that are on our campuses. But how should communities and universities collaborate to prepare students for an AI driven workforce in the future?

Liran Ma
I think communities and universities should collaborate closely to bridging the academic learning with a real world application. So in the school, we provide educations and knowledge and skills, but the communities, like schools, government agencies, nonprofit or even other schools can provide experiential learning opportunities for students to apply their techniques knowledge into the real world applications to enhance their readiness for the future AI-driven like workforce.

Beena Sukumaran
I would say the other way, because we talked about this, there will be a lot of retooling of current workers that are in various professions to be AI ready, and I think universities are there to help assist with that. So we should be thinking about, how do we reach these populations? How do we bring them to campus? Or we have to go to them, whether it be online or in-person, right ,to tell them about so offering graduate certificates, undergraduate certificates, quick learning modules, so that they can learn about some of the capabilities of AI. I do think we have a responsibility, especially as a public university in the state of Ohio, to do that for our residents and our community?

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, that's great. I have a question for you, yeah, and it's interesting. So if you just look back a year or two, right? And these AI engines were coming out, and it was, it was a hot and heavy time to have an opinion on it, and a lot of Higher Ed was scared of them, afraid of them. And we heard all the stories, the cheating and the various things and helping with homeworks and all these kind of things that would take place. And then, dot, dot, dot. You notice that the narrative has changed? It's, How can AI help with education? How can AI assist students? How can a tutor? Why don't you comment a little bit on that? Because it's been 180 degree change from where we started when these engines were first coming out, about what might happen, and now we're using them to actually enhance education.

Beena Sukumaran
When I see this, even with our professors in the classroom, we had discussions two years back, I think we were, at least in engineering and computer science, less nervous about the technology, because I think lots of them understood what the technology was, or at least we had people who could explain to us what the underlying technology was. So they did embrace it, but in this 180 degree change, I do see because professors are using it in the classroom, like Liran mentioned, to device quizzes or device learning outcomes and so on. But what they're also urging their students to do is, when they're thinking of projects or solutions, they don't want AI to be replacing you, so you need to be better than the AI tools that you're using so that you can't be replaced in the future, right? So that is what we are urging our students. And I think at least in the college, we have had most of our faculty on that bandwagon right now. So I'm excited to see what is possible. And you know, just to give you again, another example of a capstone project that we did with the Myaamia Center. I mean, think about what these students can do in reviving a language like the Myaamia language. So they were working with the Myaamia Center because there were very few people who spoke the language to revive the language by using AI. So the possibilities are endless. And I think the faculty see that, and they're very excited about it.

President Greg Crawford
Yeah, well said. I love what's going on at Miami, across all the disciplines, utilizing AI in the classroom and labs and libraries. It's just prevalent across campus.

Beena Sukumaran
Exactly.

President Greg Crawford
So every new technology has challenges and has opportunities. And I'd love for you to kind of opine upon a few of those in with respect to education, classroom teaching, maybe research, maybe methods that you use in the classroom. But give us some ideas of both the pros and the cons that you see coming down the road.

Liran Ma
To me, the biggest opportunity or challenge is actually together, because what I see is this, they give us opportunity to revolutionize our curriculum. Think about, what do we teach? How do we teach it? Because under AI, how do we revolutionize our curriculum to future to meet the future demands? But on the same time, the challenge would be, you know, not everyone are ready, or not one have the resources to prepare for the modernized curriculum and also this fast evolving technology put a lot of demand for computer science professors or other professor to utilize the technology. Another thing I worry is that for education is the inequity, because students have different access resources to this advanced AI tools and may broaden the society gap. How do we know make that more accessible to our students with different background? That's, to me, another challenge that we should be prepared for.

President Greg Crawford
So let's think about higher education landscape as a whole. You both know we've we've undergone some criticism. We've seen surveys where parents and families and students are questioning the value of higher education in today's rapidly changing world, and how fast can higher education move, et cetera. How does AI education reinforce the relevance and importance of a college degree today?

Beena Sukumaran
When I think about AI education, there is in depth knowledge required in, I would say, at least with a B.S. in AI, definitely in the AI domain, and that also leads into computer science and to understand some of these complex concepts, I do think sometimes I think we need more than four years to explain some of these complex concepts that are in the AI domain, right? So when I think about college education, what we are training our students to do through a college education is to think critically, to evaluate information that they're getting, to assess if it's the right information, if it's quality information, if it's correct information. And also the other thing that we do do in a college environment is also build up that emotional intelligence and that leadership capabilities. And I think Miami has done this so well, and as we get ready for this AI future, I do think we need more people with those skills, it becomes more and more critical that they have that

President Greg Crawford
So now it's time to look into your crystal balls, and let's talk about the future and what you expect. How will AI impact career pathways for our graduates in different fields, across different industries in the future?

Liran Ma
I think for me, AI will pretty much impact every single pathways. For me, my view would be AI will become a baseline requirement, but that expression of that baseline requirement may be different in different pathways. For example, engineers, we may use AI to design and valid models. And business and finance majors, we use AI to come up with a strategy or risk assessment. And educator was aI used tools to more engage students, right? So ultimately, AI will not eliminate careers, but will a different careers and create more opportunities for different pathways.

Beena Sukumaran
And I think we've heard lots of discourse around this already, we are seeing the impact on AI, on lots of professions. I think there is some fear right now that some of the entry level jobs might be replaced. And so how do we get students in to get that kind of experience to gear up for, you know, more advanced careers in their fields. And I hope that is just this point in time, because it is very important to give entry-level graduates that experience. And I don't think AI can replace it, and we have seen lots of data around this, how AI can enhance productivity. So maybe we start to analyze more complex problems using AI, and that is what I see, whatever field it might be, I think that's what we get to with. With AI, and I don't think it's going to replace anyone, but it's, how do we use AI to enhance productivity in some of these fields?

President Greg Crawford
No, that's right. I think also when you know, whether it was a calculator or the computer or when they came out, it did, you know, it didn't change a whole lot, but enable us all to, you know, tackle bigger things, more complex problems, and we saw that in education as well. And I think you're right on with the AI. I just do think it's going to be able to help us navigate things that are more complex that we may have not have solved by ourselves in the past. Well, let's talk about Miami, and also we touched upon this a little bit about academic integrity and rigor. So with AI and all its great value and the benefits that it brings and the power it brings to learning, et cetera, how do we maintain that academic integrity and rigor that we're so known for here at Miami University?

Beena Sukumaran
I do think, at least, you know, I still believe that students have to learn the fundamentals of their field, and the fundamentals of their field sometimes has to be done, maybe on pen and paper, and that's how we do it, right? And then you can move into the more advanced concepts, because if you don't know the fundamentals, especially in engineering, you will not know if the solution an AI, you know, agent is spitting out is the correct solution, you will not be able to analyze if that is it even makes sense for that particular material that you're analyzing. So, and I think we have always had this discussion, especially in engineering when we had more advanced computational tools like finite element analysis or any of those, right? How do you know if the output makes sense? Because you can get an output, but how do you make sense of that? And I think that is where you can use AI to augment the classroom experience, but I still believe that the fundamentals have to be taught how we have taught it in the past, and students need to learn those fundamentals.

Liran Ma
Yeah, I agree with being a actually in computer science, I think the general consensus that when students learning the introductory courses, they have to be no AI. But down the line when they come to advanced courses, we should encourage the creative and responsible use AI for learning, for projects, for other homework assignment. But also as a university, we needed to establish clear guidelines, boundaries, about framework, what is a proper use of AI? What's the meaningful use AI for a student to be our wire?

Beena Sukumaran
Yeah, and I would say that not only lends itself to learning in the classroom, it also lends itself to research in this domain we have to have, and I brought this up even with the AI fellows, that we need to have a body on campus that assesses because there are lots of things we can research, but I think should we research it? Should. How do we research it appropriately? I think we need to think about all that, and and Miami is very well positioned to do that. Yeah,

President Greg Crawford
I agree with you both on this. I it's, you know, we think a lot about it. And when you're a computational scientist, and you had mentioned finite element, or Monte Carlo, whatever you're doing, there's these big, complex calculations that we do today. And when the numbers come out, I mean, you could just accept them, but, you know, a great engineer or a great scientist, they check them, and so they push the limits. They look at zero, they look at affinity, they look at that analytical solution that they know the answer to, and plug it in. And I think we do have a responsibility to our students and our graduates that they're ready for that, so that they can be the gatekeepers and checkers on what's being spun out of the AI engines to make sure they're accurate. And again, anybody can put into an AI engine, write me a code to do this or that, a computer, and it will do that, but will it be correct? And it's one of those things that you know, we have the responsibility to train our students to think that way. So let's look ahead a little bit and maybe tell us what excites you the most about AI, what concerns you the most about AI in shaping our collective future as we roll forward in this new world of artificial intelligence,

Beena Sukumaran
I think it's an exciting time. I mean, I even remember when I had I touched my first personal computer, right? And I remember those days like I remember thinking about what would be possible, and I can tell you 30 years back, I couldn't tell you what was possible right now, right? Because we have seen computers advance to that so when I think of AI, I think of it that way, like when we had internet come on, right? Like, and I guess for some of us who are that old, we can think back to the origins of you know when those tools came in and how that changed our lives, so we have some predictors of how it might change our lives. So I'm excited to think about the possibilities. I do worry about some of the ethics of AI and the intellectual property rights, right. Who owns what like, because lots all of us are researchers. We all have, you know, research that we have contributed to now, it's all in the public domain, and I don't know if we attribute it correctly. If the AI tools attribute anything correctly. I also worry about some of those other professions, like artists and actors and, you know, film producers and writers and so on, and how we think about intellectual property rights. I also worry about the sustainability aspect too, because I know we are very proud of, you know, reducing our greenhouse footprint here at Miami. So I also think about all these AI data centers that are mushrooming all around the world, and the power consumption that goes behind some of these AI, I mean, to run some of these large language models. I think I do worry about those aspects.

Liran Ma
I think I agree with being on the sustainability is a big thing. I give you some data. They did a study for kids like newborn grow to 13 years old, the language exposure of words is about 100 million but to train that larger language model, to reach the level of 13 years old, you need trillions of tokens with language exposure that's 1000 times more. And to run that language model to answer questions, our human brain is 20 watt, but it costs over 2000 watt to run the larger model answer questions. So that's going to be big, and there's so many data center around our neighborhood and affect the lives of the residents nearby, the availability of power and the pricing and other one is, to me, the biggest worry is the misalignment between the technology power and the social society, good, right? Because AI, you know, again, this is powerful too, may deepen inequality and erode trust, and, you know, outpacing our ability to control it ethically. But again, I'm very hopeful that AI has the power to unlock human creativity and accelerate discovery and expand knowledge access.

President Greg Crawford
I think one of the elements for me, you think about how you get really dependent upon these technologies, and you misplace your cell phone for an hour, you don't know what to do with yourself, right? You have thunderstorms here in Oxford all the time, and our electricity goes out and the Internet doesn't work. You don't know what to do with yourself. And just wondering what you think about being becoming too dependent on AI. Do you think it's going to be an issue or a problem in the future? Or, how do we still remain, you know, human beings and be able to sort of operate and do things the way that we always have, even when the technology may not be working.

Beena Sukumaran
Yeah, that's a good question, right? I Hmm, I actually, and this might be a generational divide, but I actually value the time that I get when I'm cut off from things because, you know, when nobody can reach me because there's a power outage, I do take that time. I think for some things that we don't have the luxury of doing anymore, like self reflection or thinking about, you know, was that the right action that I took that day and so on? When I think about our younger generations, I think they are also learning to protect their time. I do see that. I see them trying to disconnect. I see them trying to do hikes into areas where there's no self coverage so that they can disconnect, right? So I do see people trying to and I think the most precious resource that all of us right now are trying to conserve is time. Right? Our time and our you know, because of this access to too much information, right?

Liran Ma
I think I agree, to me, we're going dependence on AI or the technology. But I think after Miami's great education, our students learn to be well developed, balanced human being, the society, I hope gradually will recognize the other perspective life and become more well rounded, I guess. Yeah.

President Greg Crawford
Well, well said. And so we're going to end on that note. Thank you, Beena and Liran, for sharing your insights and experience on the impact of AI. Miami is very fortunate to have you both leading our students and guiding them and advising them in this rapidly changing world and landscape, especially with AI, which we talked about today. And we truly appreciate all your passion, your wisdom, and enthusiasm for this great university.

Beena Sukumaran
Thank you, and we couldn't do it without your leadership.

Liran Ma
Exactly.

President Greg Crawford
Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of "In Such a Place" from Miami University. Stay tuned for more great episodes with more great guests wherever podcasts are found.