Emory College of Arts and Sciences is offering a seminar course for first-year students to help them understand artificial intelligence (AI) and its growing impact on society. The class, “College in the Age of AI,” is taught by Yana Bromberg, a professor of biology and computer science at Emory University.
The course, now in its second year, introduces students to machine learning and large language models in an accessible way for those from various academic backgrounds. Students also discuss ethical issues such as bias and fairness in algorithms. The curriculum covers how AI can be used for personalized learning, maintaining academic integrity, and supporting early interventions for student success.
Bromberg’s goal is to help students become familiar with both the benefits and challenges of AI. “The hope for this course is to calm the students down because there is a lot of media hype that AI will replace jobs,” Bromberg says. “We do much better with things that we know and are familiar with.”
The structure of the course includes introductory lectures followed by student-led presentations that often use ChatGPT as a research tool. Assignments encourage students to experiment with AI tools by generating discussion questions, using AI to answer them, and then comparing those responses with their own ideas.
Toward the end of the semester, Bromberg addresses concerns about job security in an era of rapid technological change. She tells her students: “Overall job loss is nearly negligible. AI won’t take your job, the people who know how to use AI will.”
Students who have taken the class report gaining important insights into both how AI works and its limitations. Avi Villareal, a dance major pursuing a dual degree at Emory and Georgia Institute of Technology in environmental engineering, said: “My biggest takeaway from the class was how AI is biased and flawed. AI is progressing rapidly right now, but most people don’t understand how it works, which will lead to a lot of misinformation being spread,” Villareal says. “I think having a good understanding of AI and how it can be used as a tool or an inhibitor of my learning process is going to have a positive impact on my college career.”
Myles Garber, a biology major planning to attend medical school for ophthalmology, added: “This class helped me progress in college by challenging me to think about new topics in a variety of ways and then assessing how each line of thinking competes, relative to others.”
Bromberg leads the Bromberg Lab at Emory University where her research uses computational methods to study DNA’s role in molecular biology.
