Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard

The University in Crisis? Smart Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

April 11, 2025, 1:00pm-3:00pm
HKS, Malkin Penthouse (Littauer 4th Floor)

Abstract

As students, we are increasingly experiencing our years of schooling “online.” With the advent of Generative AI, some conversations about how technology is changing and should change learning are afoot in newspaper opinion sections and faculty meetings. Harvard has recently inaugurated several efforts to respond to Generative AI, including the creation of task force on GenAI and the issuance of responsible experimentation guidelines, yet questions of how these technologies are already changing what learning means at Harvard have yet to be thoroughly explored.

A roundtable hosted by the Program on Science, Technology and Society’s Undergraduate Fellows,with faculty panelists Bharat Anand, Amanda Claybaugh, Rebecca Nesson, Jane Rosenzweig, and Madeleine Woods in conversation with student panelists 

REGISTER HERE

This workshop will seek to both assess the current state of undergraduate education in a time where Generative AI models like ChatGPT are readily in use and ask how these technologies are and should change what is being learned and how. The important questions to address then become: What analytic skills and learning outcomes should we set aside as no longer important for undergraduate education? What forms of creativity and critical thought should a Harvard education continue to value and instill?  What new vision of knowledge acquisition and intellectual proficiency should Harvard cultivate as GenAI makes some forms of learning seem useless or obsolete? How can we make sure technology supports these positive visions intentionally and does not undermine goals the university should be cultivating?

The STS Undergraduate Fellows believe that we need to be asking better questions about the state of education and its technological democratization. How are ideas of efficiency and accessibility, in combination with the rapid development of new technologies, transforming the public sphere of education? What does it mean to be a student, and what is it that we are being asked, or want, to learn? Rather than uncritically allow education to “be” transformed, we hope that this workshop can be a starting point by which to critically examine what technology is doing to the classroom and the student experience in order to transform technology’s place in our education.