DENVER — Artificial intelligence is making college students reconsider what to study as the technology changes the job market.
Denver7’s Ryan Fish spoke with Metropolitan State University Denver physics professor Jeff Loats, who is also executive director for the Center for Teaching, Learning and Design.
Loats believes AI can make people more effective and efficient when using it within their own expertise, but he said large language models like ChatGPT are not actually smart or reliable enough to make someone an expert in any given field.
“The AI tools are blandly confident on every topic under the sun, because large language models, they don't know anything, right? They don't have a cognition like we do,” Loats said. “They're very fancy, incredibly impressive pattern matching algorithms. And so you can't tell from the AI whether it's on the right track or not, which you often can with a human..... As soon as we step out of our own expertise, it is very hard to tell whether or not the AI is giving us useful information. And I don't really expect that to change a lot.”
For that reason, Loats contends that while AI will almost certainly disrupt certain “white collar” jobs, it won’t eliminate them completely.
He said critical thinking is going to remain important, and it’s something college students should take seriously.
“Their general studies program—which many college students view as sort of a weird hoop you have to jump through—that's actually the piece that the employers want more,” Loats said. “Because your senior level course in a particular field, in a very narrow situation, that might get hugely disrupted [by AI] two years from now. But the ability to talk with other humans, have teams work well, communicate effectively, get past difficulties or different perspectives, that's durable. That's going to last a long time.”
Loats added that even college students morally opposed to using AI in certain situations should practice using the technology enough to become familiar with it and understand its capabilities.
He also is advocating for more honest and open communication around AI use. Loats said people should disclose how and when they use AI when communicating with each other because that uncertainty can erode trust, especially in a setting like college.
