Introduction

The video below was, in many ways, my introduction to generative AI. I was invited to present at the Cafe Scientifique sessions, where university academics give talks on socially relevant topics, organised by colleagues at the University of Lincoln. This was my first public presentation on the emerging topic of large language models (download slides).

I tried to think about generative AI more broadly, including image generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. I also tried to avoid making this talk about cheating and listing all the possible uses of generative AI. I like to think that I cover a few ideas that aren’t included in many of the most common treatments of this subject, and I hope that this is a useful addition to the conversation on generative AI in higher education.

In preparing for this presentation, I was pushed to confront several challenging ideas and it was really the impetus for all that’s come since then, in my own development and learning in this field.

Additional resources

• Rowe, M. (2023). Generative AI in higher education. Cafe Scientifique presentation.