AI?

October 9, 2025

After using and building with AI tools for the last three years, I still have more questions than answers. Am I a Futurist or a Luddite? What makes us unique as humans? If AI eliminates labor at some future moment, what will I do when there is nothing left for me to do? Can AI solve the environmental problems it creates? Are we all eventually going to become prompt engineers? Am I aware of what this new technology is doing to my brain? Am I excited, nervous, fearful, or optimistic about the future of AI? And perhaps scariest of all: am I prepared to change myself more rapidly than ever before to adapt to this thrilling and terrifying new world?

Of course, I could just ask ChatGPT all these questions and get an answer. It’s good at giving answers. And trust me, I thought of that. Instead, I chose to sit outside Gallagher on a bright, sunny day after a blistering AI training session and, well, reflect. To paraphrase a quote from Edmund Burke: “To use AI without reflection is like eating without digesting.”

On Monday, September 29, CTE fall keynote speaker Dr. Mustafa Akben delivered a thought-provoking series of lectures and training on how to use AI tools, how institutions should adapt, and the likely future of AI. I continue to be amazed by what it can do and, more importantly, how far it has come since 2022. Hallucinations are declining, tools are improving and becoming more affordable, and the medium is becoming more democratized. “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” (as the band Timbuk3 put it). But what are those proverbial shades? We can’t mistakenly think that AI will plateau, that education won’t dramatically change, or that some areas of human creation (like the arts) should be off-limits to AI. Those glasses should instead be a reflective, meta-cognitive pause that allows us to see the sun clearly without being blinded by it. So, let’s keep creating, building, and teaching one another, and our students, about the wonders of this ubiquitous tool. Keep the Ray-Bans on my friends and keep asking questions.

Jonathan Gibson
Chair and Professor, Art Department