Statement on Artificial Intelligence

As a community grounded in making and social responsibility, Pratt is well poised to address the opportunities and challenges presented by emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, starting with the ways we structure and support student work. We are committed to an education focused on disciplinary fluency, one of our Institute Learning Goals, where students are skilled in using tools, techniques, and technologies with respect to relevant professional benchmarks, norms, and guidelines and where they gain the historical and cultural knowledge to act as ethical leaders in their field and beyond.

Generative AI sits among the many tools, techniques, and technologies available to students and professionals—capable of creative use as much as misuse. We encourage interested faculty to consider ways of teaching with AI that are consistent with Pratt’s Academic Integrity Policy and its core principles: we do our own work, we are creative, and we give credit where it is due. We recognize the complicated landscape of AI tools, many of which mine and share/sell user data and are themselves trained on datasets of questionable integrity. At the same time, we also recognize that fluency with AI tools is a growing competency sought by employers and an area of professional development across many industries.

As we look toward the fall semester, we encourage all faculty to reflect on potential uses of AI by students for a range of written, visual, coding, and other assignments. As a first step, we invite faculty to consider: 

• How might course assignments be updated, given widely available AI tools? 
• How might AI be incorporated into assignments and activities as a tool to use, critique, and create with? 
• How might students gain fluency in AI tools while also developing the norms and values that are needed to guide it?

These questions form the core of conversations that will continue throughout the semester—and beyond—including programming through the Center for Teaching and Learning, as well as talks sponsored by schools and departments.

In addition, the Office of the Provost will work with the Academic Senate to update the Academic Integrity Policy this year to include clear reference to AI tools, and has already added sample language to the syllabus template around academic integrity and unacknowledged uses of AI. 

We also invite continued faculty research around AI, from design and user interfaces to collaborations with computer scientists working at the forefront of AI applications and with scholars outlining harms and acceptable uses of these technologies.

Published August 19, 2024