Deans Blog

It is my privilege to write this blog. I wish to address three aspects – success and the steps each of us needs to take to achieve it, the actions of a successful student, and some suggestions for you to make it in this exciting pursuit of knowledge.

Success is a very value-loaded term. It is very personal but is shaped by many forces of influence since our childhood. For me, success is the opportunity to have the ability for continuous improvement of myself and the people around me. To have ability depends on context, connection, continuity, change, competition, and cooperation. For Alex, it depends on values and being in tune with herself.

Success is not external it is in you. Significantly, your heart does not lie about success. Please ask yourself what success is for you. You decide for yourself what it is and then decide the steps you need to pursue it.

As Pele, the famous footballer said, success “is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all love of what you are doing or learning to do”.  Once you decide what success is for yourself, the next logical step is to position yourself to be successful.  It would help if you organized yourself for success. These are some tips for you to follow:

• Organize your time for success as an international student. You only have 24 hours on any day. You cannot say you are time-poor. Everyone has the same amount of time. You don’t have any more time to allocate! It is about being time-focused. The attention is on how to use time more effectively! You need to plan how you are going to spend your time to achieve success. I found that the best way is to prepare a personal schedule.

• Contextualize your schedule to your conditions. Education is an investment. You invest today to reap the benefits in the future. To create a personal schedule based on your values to achieve your defined success, organize around the lectures and tutorial times and your study time. Then fill in the rest of the activities to achieve your defined success. (Hint: Do not forget to fill in the travel times between your activities).

• Strategize your daily activity. Once you have organized your timetable to achieve your “success”, work out the steps you will follow. For example, when do you have to get up to reach the lecture on time? Have you allowed yourself sufficient time in case there is a delay in the public transport system network? Be realistic when you work out the steps based on your circumstances. Work out a schedule to reach the class at least 10 minutes early. The more realistic you are when setting up these actions the higher the probability of reaching your goals.

• Implement the Plus 1 rule. Plus 1 rule is to plan not only what you wish to achieve but also what you are going to do when you have achieved what you set out to do. For example, you set the goal to attend the lecture. Plan not only how you are going to position your activity to attend the lecture on time but also what you are going to do in the classroom after reaching on time. Ask yourself what you need to take with you to be able to follow the material discussed in the classroom. You need to take something to write on and write with as well as a calculator. These are the basics you will need to help you to be successful in maximizing your chances for successful use of time in the classroom.

• Prepare for effective engagement in the learning process. The unit outline provides you with all the necessary information. Make sure you are familiar with the unit objectives, unit organization, and unit assessments – what, when, and how much they are worth. Based on your understanding of the unit expectations, ask yourself how to be an effective student to maximize learning. Identify the steps you need to take to be successful in your learning. My advice is to prepare for the lecture (one effective way is to take your notes) and answer the tutorial questions as a guide to test your understanding of what you have learned (by comparing the answers you prepared before attending the tutorial with the answers provided by the instructor to the tutorial questions in the tutorial) and plan and implement timely completion of the assessment tasks.

• Achieve study-life balance. It is important to recognize today will not come back in our lives. At the same time, today is connected to yesterday and influences tomorrow. It is therefore important for you to realize what you do today is based on the learnings until yesterday and becomes a building block for tomorrow. So, choose today's activities wisely because you are contributing to the blueprint of your life. So don’t forget to have fun balancing study and life. 

I wish you the very best in your pursuit of success. Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of your successful journey. Until, next time…

Prof. Sivaram (Ram) Vemuri
Dean

Fraud, Theft, Scams, Political Disruption and More

AI makes it possible to create deep-fakes, ie fake representations of real people or events.   Anyone who spends anytime on the Internet will know that there is a plethora of images, audio and video freely accessible.  While some uses of deep-fakes are done for innocent fun, others can amount to spreading false information in the middle of a tight political race.

In business deep-fakes can mislead people into believing that a product or service has the endorsement of a particular person or company.  Deep-fakes can be used to commit fraud or make other deceitful representations made for illegal and dishonest purposes.  It is also possible that deep-fakes become so common that people doubt the legitimacy of all such people or products.

Fake content can cause havoc and panic in the middle of a pandemic, cause chaos in share markets, obstruct justice or falsify information. Criminals are taking advantage of the technology to conduct misinformation campaigns, commit fraud , obstruct justice, sow dissent and division,  and even bring down an organisation or even a government.

Another important issue is the potential of AI to breach security, facilitate identity theft, fraud, promote scams,  and other crimes. Once an AI developer has such information it is a small step to create multiple versions of that person.  These deep-fakes can be used to get access to health data, bank accounts and other important documents and information.

Designers of AI systems need to be aware of the harms that may be facilitated by this new technology. Ethical behaviour within organisations, effective systems of quality control, security and authenticity,  and a culture of ethical behaviour are all vital.  Externally, governments and industry bodies must also develop laws, regulations and standards that promote the ethical use of AI.

Lessening of Individual Autonomy and Human Interaction

Some experts fear that with increasing automation, we humans will become bored and lazy.   We are not too far away from the reality that the world will be dominated and run more by artificial intelligence.  

What will this mean for the human race. Will we become passive, bored, lazy and out of touch?  Will this disempowerment create and invite a takeover by artificial intelligence systems?  Or, will a few elites, using these new and powerful systems, be in total charge with the result that individual freedom will be severely limited

An example of how AI can empower those whose agenda are to gain control over people and limit freedom is found in Carol Roth’s  NY Times Best Seller, You Will Own Nothing: Your War with a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back. The author and entrepreneur paints a picture of what would happen if a new financial world order controlled by global elites are able to gain the type of control made possible, for example, by eliminating all hard currency and enforcing a system of digital currency under the control of a group of government, international organisations, business and technology elites. 

She argues that a system of ‘social credits’ would accompany such a system enabling the elites to shut down dissent and control the general population. It will result in debt, deprivation and desperation. It will mean people own fewer assets and that we have less control over their lives thereby lessening the ability to protect one’s wealth now or for future generations.

These questions raise important philosophical, psychological, moral, governance, legal and ethical questions that must be addressed if society is to fully benefit from AI while at the same time managing the significant risks involved.

Mass Unemployment

As mentioned above, the workforce in an AI dominated world may be a dystopia for those who lose their jobs. A lot of industry disruption and job destruction will have to be carefully managed. Governments will have to carefully plan the transition for those industries that are severely disrupted.

Major service functions such as customer service centres are likely to be heavily hit as AI applications coupled with robotics rapidly replace many of these types of roles.  For example, most readers  have have experienced  a chat with a company’s automated answering service.  AI  ChatBots will become increasingly popular and will replace many of the humans now filling those roles. Customer service A 2022 study from the tech research company Gartner predicted that chatbots will be the main customer service channel for roughly 25% of companies by 2027.

Another example is the fast-food industry.  In common with thousands of other young people, my daughters gained their first work experience at a McDonald’s restaurant.  Today, customers order via an on-screen kiosk In China AI robotic chefs can cook your food. Other robots can wait on tables and take your order.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are likely to be significant shortages of those people who have the skills to take up the new positions required to support the growth in the AI related fields.  There will be a significant battle for talent.   And, as in all battles, there will be wounded and casualties and wounded, winners and losers, the dominant and the dominated.

Education

AI presents many challenges for education. Students, faculty and administration will see their systems severely challenged by new AI applications.  For academics, it will significantly change aspects of research and scholarship.  Many of these developments will bring improvements.  The ‘bad’, however, is that it riding this major wave of innovation will require vision, talent, resources, training, resilience and more. 

Many will fail.  The system will be disrupted.  The impact of how this all plays out remains unknown, uncertain, and unpredictable.  A case in point is the decades long development of computer assisted learning packages. 

They have been very slow to catch on due to many factors: teacher unions fear job losses; the current model is built on the assumptions based on age level rather than development/skill level; educators do not have adequate technology skills; the financial models have not been right and authors are not sufficiently rewarded; people are generally highly resistant to change.

The other challenge for education is to define how it can best serve society by providing the learning, research and training required to meet the multiple needs and demands if society is to gain the benefits of AI and manage the potential disadvantages and harms that may be caused.

Law

At the macro level, laws and regulations will be required to provide the governance framework to guide society in the Age of the Machine.  This will be especially challenging given the geographic limits on the application of law and fact that different countries will have different approaches.  Underlying the formal legal regime will also be the reality that countries will have different ethical standards.  Some countries will see it in their interest to press ahead, despite the risks, in order to gain a competitive advantage over other countries.  

At the ground level it will also be important for designers and users of AI systems to be aware of new problems that might emerge.   AI systems can and do discriminate.  AI tools have the potential to embed unlawful biases and discrimination and do so on a system-wide scale and in a non-transparent way. 


This can impact decisions on who gets a loan, who gets hired, who gets favourable administrative decisions, who gets monitored by the police, etc. AI systems also use information, pictures and other intellectual property, all of which is loaded up into the application. 

This raises serious issues regarding the potential intellectual property violations that might occur.[2] AI also creates IP thus raising further questions about whether the existing intellectual property legal regime will include IP creation by non-humans.

Ethical and Personal Issues

As mentioned above, the growing development and application of AI to all sectors of human activity raises many ethical issues.  It threatens the degree of human autonomy, challenges existing rules, laws and standards in society, threatens a loss of control, challenges expectations of privacy, and so on. A major question is the extent to which we can achieve agreement among nations or even between public and private sectors and other groupings within nations regarding central ethical issues raised by AI. 


For example, what should be the degree of transparency underlying the use of AI systems and applications?  How can principles of justice and fairness be promoted and protected by AI development?  How can we regulate and promote fairness, non-maleficence, responsibility and privacy in the development and use of AI?

There is also a psychological dimension to AI adoption that must be considered. While AI and its applications have grown rapidly, one should not underestimate the limitations and challenges stemming from the natural tendency of humans to cope with, resist and even fear change. 


For example, a major roadblock to the  implementation of AI applications to augmented medicine is the reality
that doctors and other health care providers have resisted such changes and not been prepared for it.  Many patients, however, have welcomed its advantages in providing for a greater autonomy and a more personalized treatment.

More than this, as the impact of AI grows it begins to challenge the relationship between humans and machines.  In doing so, it challenges traditional notions of identity, sexuality, gender, relationships and rules as new forms of discourse emerge to explain and govern relationships between machine and human intelligence.

Decades ago it was Internet, then the World Wide Web, then Steve Jobs and the Apple products that would change the world.  Then came he cloud, social media, the Internet-of-Things, block-chain, metaverse, Zoom—the impact of technology continues to make headlines and AI brings all of these together. Over the last few months, the latest buzz concerns artificial intelligence (AI). Not a day goes highlighting either gloom and doom or promises of great things to come. 

As a higher education institute concerned focused on the professions, the general consensus is that every major profession or industry will experience significant, and in many cases transformational, changes as a result of developments in AI. Health care, education, law, accounting, business, communications, transportation, retail, agriculture—all will have to grapple with the impact of AI in seizing its advantages while minimising potential risks.

What is AI?

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that uses multiple disciplines including deep and machine learning,  to build smart machines that are able to do complex tasks, including in some cases those that ordinarily would require human intelligence.

AI comes in two major forms: narrow and general. 

 Narrow AI involves the creation of smart machines that can do one task, for example, play chess.  With large data sets and blinding speed and the ability to constantly learn, a chess computer can perform tasks better than any human.  Evidence the defeat of world chess champion Gary Kasparov by ‘Big Blue’. 

 General AI (or ‘strong’ AI) involves the creation of smart machines that have a much wider or general application. An example is a robot or an android that looks human and can do a wide range of tasks, only faster, more consistently and smarter than a human.

 
AI Potential  and Fears.  Many experts write of the many positives that AI will bring to almost every field of endeavour. Reflecting upon the immense potential of AI Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee wrote in 2018:

 “For more than 250 years the fundamental drivers of economic growth have been technological innovations. The most important of these are what economists call general-purpose technologies — a category that includes the steam engine, electricity, and the internal combustion engine. The most important general-purpose technology of our era is artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning.”

Most of the fears about AI are about general AI.  At the extremes, some experts think What are the risks to humanity itself when most of the ‘intelligence’ in the world is machine made rather than man-made.  The essence of these concerns is captured by world renown theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, who noted:

"Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks." -

AI Issues for students preparing for a career in the professions.

For students pursing a degree in the major professions, here are just a few of the many issues and topics involved with AI development about which you should have some awareness:

• Industrial opportunities and challenges in developing AI
• Enhanced data collection, big data analytics/algorithms and ever-increasing application to new areas of human activity.
• Understanding society-wide impact in key areas, e.g introduction and rapid expansion in use of automated transport
• Expanding the application of blockchain technology in providing solutions to multiple industries
• The role of AI in the biological sciences and breakthroughs in health informatics
• The role of AI in enhancing the productivity and intellectual power of humans
• Role of humans in interacting with AI products to ensure they are safe and do what we want
• Speech recognition developments to promote universal applications and enhance human-machine interactions
• The impact of AI on digital marketing and other business activities
• Commercialization challenges and opportunities in relation to AI
• Capturing video and incorporating it in AI applicationS
• Machine and deep learning in the next generation of AI applications
• How to better define and control the boundaries on AI systems
• Growing movement towards singularity and machines approaching and in an increasing number of areas surpassing human intelligence.
• Capturing the potential of big data analytics while at the same time dealing with challenges of discrimination and prejudice that can occur
• How to build AI to Scale and gain return on investment
• Internet of things: use of AI to help build systems in which various technologies are connected and working together to transform organizations and industries.
• The impact of robotics and AI on employment.
• Education: how do we bridge the talent gap needed to develop this important new area? How can universities, through their research mission, better support the growth and development of this important industry? How will AI change how education is delivered and to whom?
• Geopolitical questions such as regulation across national borders, impact on security, cyber warfare and so on
• Challenge of regulation so that AI advances promote industry advancement and at the same time protect important human values such as privacy.
• Law as infrastructure: how can a legal framework be put into place that achieves the benefits of AI while at the same time limiting and guarding against potential harms that may result? How does law, which tends to work on a linear path, keep up with technology which is growing exponentially?

Conclusion

Above all, today’s students as our future leaders in government, industry, education and all professions must develop a deep understanding of the nature and implications of AI so that they may enable us to have the knowledge to reap its rewards and the wisdom and responsibility to ensure its use for the betterment of humankind and society.