How will AI shape my future in UCD? – October Roundtable
We are delighted to invite you to our upcoming WST event this October 26 from 2pm – 3:30pm on campus. The event format is an open roundtable discussion with the ever popular social and networking event in advance from 1pm -2pm with lunch provided. Booking is available here through Infohub
The WST October Roundtable is an internal UCD roundtable on Disruptive Technology, specifically AI, (with ChatGPT being the shorthand to refer to this) and the potential impact of its use by professional staff in their day-to-day work and future implications.
The intent of the roundtable is to have an open discussion by pertinent members of staff from different areas of responsibility that are being impacted by the arrival of ChatGPT in our workplace. As a University, the focus in most conversations is primarily on the student and academic use of ChatGPT as a tool but the implications for professional staff are also significant and we can benefit from teasing these ideas out in an internal discussion.
With the reality that AI is already here and in use in varying degrees around the University, what does this mean for our jobs both day-to-day and in the future; what are considerations we should aware of, what skills requirements might be necessary and what might those changes mean in the near future; how might we be impacted in our future opportunities and what does this mean for the future of our organisation?
We will also be taking questions from our audience on the day to add an opportunity to voice perspectives and considerations that may not have been considered in the scope of the questions. If you have anything you would like to share that you think would be relevant or of value to the discussion please get in touch with us at this address: agile@ucd.ie
The purpose of the roundtable is not to reach a conclusion or agreement on how to proceed but simply to have an informed discussion to examine our own thinking on the subject as an organisation.
We are delighted to have the involvement of Tristan Aiken, Chief People Officer and Director of SIRC, Legal Services & Transformation as the moderator of the discussion and he along with our other participants will approach the topic, from their different areas of expertise and managerial perspectives but also as members of the community cognizant of the strategic priorities of the University.
The panel members are:
- Marcellina Fogarty, Senior Equality Diversity and Inclusion Manager, Human Resources (HR)
- Mark Lande, Director of Enterprise Applications, IT Services – Enterprise Applications Group
- Dr. Neil Hurley, Associate Professor, Head Of School, School of Computer Science
- Arlene Healy, Director of Collections and Digital Services, UCD Library
- Phillip Quinlan, Head of Operational Innovation, UCD Innovation Academy
This event will be an in person event with a networking opportunity for attendees in advance of the session.
EVENT DETAILS
Moderator: Tristan Aitken
Roundtable participants: Marcellina Fogarty, Mark Lande, Dr. Neil Hurley, Arlene Healy, & Phillip Quinlan
Date: Thursday October 26 2023
Time: 2pm – 3:30pm
(Optional Networking event & lunch for all attendees at 1pm)
Location: The Confucius Institute for Ireland, UCD
We are inviting questions to guide the conversation and contributions about the impact of AI on our work from across UCD. If you would like to be involved in shaping the discussion please get in touch at agile@ucd.ie
I have used ChatGPT but in a controlled environment. I do not use my UCD email account to sign up because the less information and the environmental knowledge the better. I think there should be more ways to anonymize one’s queries. I also only do these queries outside UCD useless absolutely necessary such as a shell script code which is very critical syntactically. I am not a luddite as I have over 40+ years experience in ICT. In order to get the best out of the AI, one should know, to a great extent, the answer to one’s question. Otherwise the AI could be bringing one down rabbit holes. I find that some queries and have to be rephrased a number of times to get the desired outcome. The general use of AI in the vast majority uses are fine but I do wish to flag that some queries be might be regarded as on a path to potential IP property and one does not know explicitly to the status of ownership. If I am not mistaken, the latest iteration of ChatGPT is behind a paywall. This will certainly be a problem for me personally as I have absolutely no budget at all. I have, in the past, been asked to engage with an AI group but declined on moral and ethical grounds. If one does not fully understand the solution give by AI then this could possible lead to a very precarious situation without even having due regard to conscious/unconscious biases in the AI used. When a certain search engine came to dominance the EU had to intervene as there were biases in the resulting ranking of replies to searches.
I am not available, should I be invited, to the round table talks