AI can give answers quickly, and universities must guard the opportunity for students to practice thinking. National Taiwan University Vice President Liao Wan-jun presented the "Preliminary Concept Report on the Five-Year Plan of the AI and Digital Governance Strategy Working Group" at the school council meeting today (17th). It takes "humanities as the root and AI as the wing" as the core. Regarding the challenge of "when we take away AI, what is left in our brains?", he emphasized that "the brain is not outsourced." The detailed plan will be reported at the next school council meeting.
This plan originated from a proposal at the school council meeting in June this year. President Chen Wenwen presided over the preparatory meeting on July 27 and established the "AI and Digital Governance Strategy Working Group", which consists of five groups: strategic integration, talent cultivation, innovative research, smart administration and computing environment, including representatives from administrative units, colleges, students and administrative staff.
Please read on...
Liao Wanjun emphasized that creativity, critical thinking, value judgment, academic autonomy and teacher-student interaction are all core values that universities must uphold. It is easy to obtain answers by relying heavily on AI, but it may sacrifice the opportunity to practice judgment. Humanistic values should be included at the beginning of planning rather than being reinforced afterwards.
Talent cultivation is divided into four levels: basic literacy, tool application, professional application and overall innovation capabilities. The first two levels are expected to be popularized throughout the school, while the last two levels allow students to combine professional problem solving, team coordination and AI tools through advanced courses, cross-domain learning and project training.
The "NTU COOL AI Learning Partner" launched in September this year has provided real-time bilingual subtitles, video AI Q&A and automatic question generation, and can be used by all teachers and students in the school. It also plans to use AI to assist teachers in designing courses, evaluating and analyzing teaching.
In terms of research, National Taiwan University has announced research integrity guidelines related to the use of generative AI, emphasizing that researchers must bear the ultimate responsibility for the use, output and limitations of AI. Administrative applications have gradually moved from knowledge questions and answers to business assistance and system integration, which require authorization, supervision and auditing; computing resources are complementary from inside and outside the school, and in principle, sensitive data should be kept on campus.
A teacher from the Department of Mathematics pointed out that at this time last year, he still believed that mathematics would not be easily replaced by AI, but in the past three months, there have been great changes. His experience of using AI is that after people come up with ideas, AI can help promote them in depth, but so far we have not seen AI actually create new ideas. He believes that what is more important is whether teachers and students can actually use the tools, and he recommends establishing complete support. The school responded that it is planning to provide cheaper subscription fees through campus licensing, and there are also open source models available.
Other teachers are concerned about the impact of AI on emotions and interpersonal interactions, and suggest a higher level assessment of its impact on the development of human society. The school stated that equipment, procurement and resource allocation are still subject to detailed planning. In the future, opinions from the school will be collected and continued adjustments will be made based on technology, regulations and usage conditions.
