Executives are working to acclimate educators and healthcare providers to AI

When ChatGPT became a thing, educators, and critics, were worried about what it would mean for their students. Annie Chechitelli, chief product officer at Turnitin, during a panel at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference on Tuesday, explained that about 5% of papers turned in have 80% or more material from AI in them. Turnitin has about 16,000 customers in 185 countries, so 5% might not feel like a lot but it still begs the question, according to Chechitelli: “how are we talking to students about the proper ethical use of AI?”

Teachers, on the other hand, are asking themselves how they should use AI, how it can progress education, and how it could hinder it? But there is a problem, Chechitelli said, a third of teachers have never used the technology, while 60% of students have. “That’s a huge chasm in terms of these people trying to work together to develop that trust,” she said, when it comes to using AI.

There is an issue of equity, too. There are places across the country where teachers might have less access to AI, and therefore training, than others, Maria Flynn, president and chief executive of Jobs for the Future, mentioned. “We are starting from a place where folks have very different access, have very different levels of kind of literacy in general, let alone AI literacy,” Flynn said, That’s why her nonprofit is trying to figure out how to level the playing field when it comes to AI access, she said, and then use it to accelerate skills training. 

Then there’s the medical field, and world of healthcare, and from a mainstage discussion a day earlier we know executives are banking on AI to unburden doctors, simplify things, and save time. But people don’t always love change. Some of that resistance to hop on the AI train comes from nurses, in that they want to do what’s best for their patients, Amy McCarthy, chief nursing officer at Hippocratic AI, explained. So as she’s doing her job, she thinks: “how do we make sure that nurses have this education in front of them?”

If nurses don’t understand how to use AI it becomes a barrier to adoption, she said. When they understand, then they can advocate for ethical use, and what’s best for their patients. “From my career as an in-patient nurse… What I find a lot is that we are given technology to use, and it doesn’t necessarily always fit what we’re doing,” she said, and so that results in not using it to its full extent, plus time wasted on workarounds. Nurses just need the tools, McCarthy said. 

Recently, Hippocratic AI and Adtalem partnered to advance healthcare education. Katherine Strang, senior director of product design and development at Adtalem Global Education, another panelist, said the partnership is “a great opportunity to ensure that they’re going out into the workforce with the skills that are going to be needed in the future and now.”

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