09 Jun Quantum Leaps in Education
Artificial intelligence is here to stay. UW–Madison students are grappling with its promise and perils.
When Annika Hallquist ’24, MSx’25 reflects on her undergrad years at UW–Madison, she does so in halves: before AI and after AI.
Hallquist was a sophomore in November 2022, when the release of ChatGPT abruptly ushered in a new era of generative artificial intelligence. Initially, the industrial engineering student dismissed the AI chatbot as a “cheat tool.” But the following semester, the professor of her machine-learning class encouraged students to embrace the technology as something of a teammate and tutor — a tool that can assist with tricky coding tasks and reduce complicated concepts into understandable terms.
“I’m jealous seeing freshmen and sophomores take the incredibly hard weed-out classes that I took, knowing that they have AI,” Hallquist says. “I’d have to wait in a long line during office hours to get a coding project done. Now they use AI to help them if they’re stuck.”
“You want to use AI as a tool, but you don’t want to use it as a crutch.”