According to Cliff Carrubba, center co-leader and chair of the university’s Department of Quantitative Theory and Methods, the new Center for Artificial Intelligence Learning will host speaker events, workshops and skill-building modules designed to give students and faculty foundational knowledge about the emerging tech field, including AI’s technical and ethical limitations. He said the center looks to be a focal point for students and faculty to learn more about how AI is impacting, or poised to impact, their respective fields, though much of its programming will be online. He added that the plan is for the university to eventually build a physical space where students, faculty and staff can network and learn, and there are also plans to hire more staff in the future.
“The goal of the center is to help build broad awareness and literacy about how AI is operating as a product and a tool, and how we as a society are responding to it,” he said, adding that programming is set to begin this fall. “Beyond that, for those who want more than foundational awareness, [we will teach] what AI tools are really doing, how it really works, when it succeeds and fails at different types of missions, and the more technical and mechanical aspects of AI as a technology.”
Carrubba said the center is part of an Emory initiative called AI.Humanity, described on the university’s website as a means of shaping “the AI revolution to better human health, generate economic value, and promote social justice.” To help with these aims, he added that the center will partner with Emory Libraries to provide resources, expertise and collaboration for designing new AI courses and workshop programming. The center will also provide IT assistance from a help desk staffed by undergraduate and graduate students, as well as an online resource library, video tutorials and AI tools.
“As we continue to hire new faculty and expand academic programs in the AI space, the Center for AI Learning will be essential to creating a tech-savvy community,” Ravi Bellamkonda, Emory University’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said in a public statement. “It will be a nerve center that empowers our scholars and encourages collaboration in a new technological era. It’s not just for scientists and AI researchers — it’s for everyone. AI touches us all, so we all have a part to play in harnessing its power to improve the human condition.”
Carrubba said the center will infuse AI knowledge throughout the university’s pedagogy to supplement traditional academic programs and for-credit courses. He added that the center will also teach faculty and staff more about how to use basic AI tools, as well as how to use AI to enhance their courses and research.
According to the university announcement, the center’s core offerings will include short courses available to the entire Emory community, starting this summer with research practicums for students. It said the center’s programming will touch a range of topics, from database basics, cloud computing and AI ethics to more advanced lessons in data visualization, neural networks and bioinformatics.
“It’s really a broad sweep to transform and infuse expertise in AI across our entire curriculum and in interdisciplinary fields,” Carrubba noted.
Carrubba said he envisions the center playing an important role in cultivating AI scholars and broad interest in the subject among all students, “regardless of major, research focus or position,” adding that AI is poised to change the nature of work across industries that are becoming more and more automated.
“It’s changing what we can do and how we can do it, it’s changing how we learn about the world and what we can learn from it,” he said. “It’s impacting literally everything — no field, industry or parts of our lives are going to go untouched. Having our students in a position to be able to thrive in that environment rather than just learning about it as they go is imperative.”
