News — Florida State University continues to make an enormous investment in artificial intelligence – a critical and forward-thinking technology that is bound to reshape higher education for decades to come.
Faculty, staff and researchers are using the latest AI tools and technologies in several ways: FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Dean Suvranu De led the development of an that helps to train surgeons by analyzing video of their surgical technique and providing feedback; the College of Nursing launched the nation’s combining artificial intelligence and health care; Professors Hailey Kuang and Prashant Singh of the Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences are addressing ; the College of Law is integrating AI research to better equip their students for the future.
is a professor of information and associate vice provost for academic innovation at FSU. He works with faculty, staff and students to integrate new ideas into the university’s educational practices and help shape interdisciplinary cooperation.
Marty worked with FSU’s Information Technology Services and Office of Digital Learning to launch FSU’s official artificial intelligence website – – to better detail the university’s commitment to student success through AI.
The academic innovator is excited about what the future holds at FSU, believing that AI can impact higher education in a positive way.
“What has me most excited about AI is how AI is leveraging academic innovation,” Marty said. “What people are realizing right now is that this is a great opportunity for us to change the way we teach and research and everything we do that is important in academia. All of this is an opportunity for us to reshape higher education.”
Media interested in interviewing Marty on AI’s influence on higher education can contact him at [email protected].
Paul Marty, Associate Vice Provost for Academic Innovation, Florida State University
What are some ways that AI is transforming higher education?
“When we think about how we’re using AI to leverage academic innovation on campus, the first step is to recognize that universities are no longer places where you go to acquire information, and they have not been in a very long time. Knowledge is not the rare commodity that it once was – knowledge is increasingly available to everyone with an internet connection, and in that world, what’s the role and purpose of universities? I’m sure we’ve all heard people ask, ‘Why go to university if you can learn the same thing online for free on YouTube?’ And my answer is that higher education is not about learning things – it’s about learning how to apply the things you learn, how to define problems and develop solutions to those problems. That’s how AI is reshaping higher education – by shifting the focus from learning things to lifelong learning, building human-human connections and developing an innovation mindset in our students.”
How do you see universities adapting to this rapid change?
“Universities are actually very good at handling disruptive technologies – calculators, personal computers, the internet and more. Academics have a lot of experience doing this going all the way back to the invention of writing. On the one hand, academia can be slow to change and resistant to change, but on the other hand, what history has shown us is that academics are very good at adopting disruptive technologies over time and changing the way they teach. Think about the way that math departments evolved their teaching around calculators or modern language departments evolved their teaching around Google Translate – we’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again. We know what we’re doing, and thanks to AI, we have the opportunity here to reshape what we consider important in higher education, so that we’re not just checking boxes for compliance but creating meaningful and engaged learning experiences for our students.”
How can we best ensure that AI is not a total replacement for human learning and training?
“In a world where access to AI is ubiquitous, where everyone has access to the same knowledge, the same information, the same data – where AI can give you the answers to the questions you ask – what will set humans apart from AI is how humans mediate those answers for other people. What you know will be far less important than how you know it and whether you can share that knowledge with other people with empathy, inspiration and critical thinking skills. And this is not new to AI – we’ve been saying this to our students forever – your technology skills are far less important than your people skills, your leadership skills and your management skills. If we want our students to succeed, then they need to be able to answer, ‘What’s your value add? What can you do that AI cannot? And our answer to that question is what makes us truly and uniquely human.’”
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