Welcome to AI in Academia: Navigating the Future, a bi-weekly podcast where the realms of higher education and artificial intelligence converge. Hosted by two colleagues at Bentley University, Noah Giansiracusa and Director of Academic Technologies Gaurav Shah, this series explores the multifaceted impacts, risks, and growing opportunities of AI in the world of academia. Each episode, we invite a guest to discuss topics around AI that shape teaching, learning, research, and academic administration. From ethical considerations to technological breakthroughs, our discussions will span the gamut of AI's influence in academia

Feb 16, Trailer (2min)

Feb 20, Episode 1: Paul Tesluk, Provost at Bentley University (33min)
In this inaugural episode, Paul Tesluk, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Bentley University discusses the role of higher education leadership in supporting AI, Bentley’s response to the use of AI in teaching and scholarship, a new AI task force at Bentley, and using AI for scaling operations and reducing costs for programs and initiatives.

Feb 20, Episode 2: Axel Seemann, Professor of Philosophy at Bentley University (35min)
The head of Bentley's philosophy department, Axel Seeman, chats about the new computer science/philosophy joint major in AI at Bentley, why interdisciplinarity is "bloody hard," what role philosophy plays in AI and in preparing students for a world full of AI, what Descartes would have said about the latest chatbots, and what impact AI is going to have on our social lives and our feelings of loneliness.

Mar 5, Episode 3: Monica Garfield, Professor of Computer Information Systems at Bentley University (28min)
Monica Garfield, Professor and Chair of the Computer Information Systems department at Bentley University, discusses the evolution of AI, low-code/no-code environments, how to prepare students for a rapidly changing workforce, the right way to teach prompt engineering, Bentley's new cross-disciplinary AI major, what other universities should be mindful of when building AI programs, and what research tasks AI is ready to help faculty with.

Mar 19, Episode 4: Chase Cicchetti, Lecturer in Finance at Bentley University (34min)
Chase Cicchetti, Lecturer in Finance at Bentley University, discusses what happened when his students created their own class policy on AI, how generative AI sped up his research, how LLMs are poised to impact the finance industry, and what the biggest indicator was that some of his students used ChatGPT to write their essays.

Apr 5, Episode 5: Chris Beneke, Professor of History at Bentley University (39min)
Chris Beneke, Professor of History at Bentley University, discusses how Bentley's university-wide first year seminar class dealt with AI disruptions, what teaching AI and teaching sex ed have in common, how web search is evolving with AI, and how AI is forcing higher ed to confront some challenging questions around its mission and clarify its purpose.

Apr 20, Episode 6: Fred Ledley, Professor of Natural and Applied Sciences at Bentley University (40min)
Fred Ledley, professor of Natural & Applied Sciences at Bentley University, discusses how today's AI grew out of the big data methods of computational biology from the past few decades, how AI is changing the way science is taught and researched, how it's paving the way for personalized medicine, what scientific research papers might look like in the future, and what chatbots do better than web search and what web search still offers that chatbots need to improve on.

May 23, Episode 7: Jennifer Xu, Professor of Computer Information Systems at Bentley University (39min)
Jennifer Xu, professor of Computer Information Systems at Bentley University, discusses how to teach AI to business students, the intellectual  value of learning coding, the data needs of AI versus human brains, and why curiosity and empathy are paramount as we prepare for jobs of the future.