Penn State wants to be a leader in the field of artificial intelligence, and Fotis Sotiropoulos, the university’s provost, laid out a vision for how that will happen during a Penn State board of trustees committee meeting Thursday.
The “blueprint” Sotiropoulos presented included everything from AI literacy to training the state’s workforce. He said by next fall all new students, along with faculty and staff will get AI literacy training.
“Many of our students will have to do jobs that have yet to be invented, and we need to be at the cutting edge," Sotiropoulos said. "This is the nature of exponential change that we are facing right now.”
He said every college, campus and program needs to make sure all graduates are prepared to use AI in their careers.
Another initiative is shifting to experiential learning and projects across the university.
“In the future, students will be coming to the universities not to (hear) the standard lectures from our faculty," he said. "Our faculty will have resources and time to engage much more meaningful and transformative types of experiences with students.”
And, Sotiropoulos said, Penn State can be the institution that helps train Pennsylvania’s workforce, using its campuses, online World Campus and Extension.
