Ohio university says all students will be required to train and ‘be fluent' in AI
Ohio State University has announced that all of its students will be using artificial intelligence later this year, requiring them to become fluent in combining conventional learning with AI.
'Ohio State has an opportunity and responsibility to prepare students to not just keep up, but lead in this workforce of the future,' said the university's president, Walter 'Ted' Carter Jr.
He added: 'Artificial intelligence is transforming the way we live, work, teach and learn. In the not-so-distant future, every job, in every industry, is going to be [affected] in some way by AI.'
Ohio State's provost, Ravi Bellamkonda, added that its AI fluency initiative will embed education about the technology throughout the undergraduate curriculum.
'Through AI Fluency, Ohio State students will be 'bilingual' – fluent in both their major field of study and the application of AI in that area,' he said.
The university said its program will prioritize the incoming freshman class and onward, in order to make every Ohio State graduate 'fluent in AI and how it can be responsibly applied to advance their field'.
The novel embrace of AI in higher education comes as a recent study by the Pew Research Center found 26% of of teenagers used ChatGPT for schoolwork in 2024 – twice as many as in 2023.
But with AI rapidly becoming mainstream, students will not be allowed to use generative AI to pass off assignments as their own work – and faculty staff will be advised on how to maintain academic integrity.
Steven Brown, an associate professor of philosophy at the university, told NBC News that after students turned in the first batch of AI-assisted papers he found 'a lot of really creative ideas'.
'My favorite one is still a paper on karma and the practice of returning shopping carts,' Brown said.
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Brown said that banning AI from classwork is 'shortsighted', and he encouraged his students to discuss ethics and philosophy with AI chatbots.
'It would be a disaster for our students to have no idea how to effectively use one of the most powerful tools that humanity has ever created,' Brown said. 'AI is such a powerful tool for self-education that we must rapidly adapt our pedagogy or be left in the dust.'
Separately, Ohio's AI in Education Coalition is working to develop a comprehensive strategy to ensure that the state's K-12 education system, encompassing the years of formal schooling from kindergarten through 12th grade in high school, is prepared for and can help lead the AI revolution.
'AI technology is here to stay,' then lieutenant governor Jon Husted said last year while announcing an AI toolkit for Ohio's K-12 school districts that he added would ensure the state 'is a leader in responding to the challenges and opportunities made possible by artificial intelligence'.
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