As part of a workshop at the NERA conference, I gave a three-minute lightning talk about our work with educating all employees. This is part of our Nordic project, NordicEdAI. Below are my notes.

Hi, my name is Peter Parnes. I am a professor in Pervasive and mobile computing at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden. 

I have been conducting research on learning with modern technologies for about 30 years, and since 2022, I have focused on applied AI and learning. 

At my university, LTU, we have concluded that AI changes almost everything, including learning, research and administration. Thus, we want every employee to know what AI is and how it affects their work. 

Why should everybody learn about AI? 

Everybody needs to understand how AI affects society and thus changes _what_ our students should learn. 

Everybody needs to understand the risks and ethical issues with using AI. Both directly and indirectly.

Everybody also needs to understand how we as a government entity, are allowed to use AI. 

Finally, it is a democracy question. If we don’t understand AI’s opportunities and risks in society, we cannot participate in shaping its impact. It is our responsibility to learn more about AI to engage in democratic discussions.

What did we do? We created a new course for all employees: 1900 persons, teachers, researchers, and administrative personnel.

The course includes an introduction to AI and Generative AI, tools, examples, thoughts on learning and examination, legal requirements, and many examples from our own teachers and researchers. 

It is a 40-hour course that participants take at their own pace with a bigger final assignment. 

To encourage everybody to take the course, we auto-enrolled everybody. The course started 2 weeks ago. 

What is next? 

We are going to continue to help our employees learn more about AI through clear recommendations, workshops, inspiration events, and promoting that everybody shares their findings around AI with each other. 

I also want to briefly mention our work on AI guidelines and recommendations. 

At LTU, I created our first AI guidelines in early 2023. 

Now, I work on a national level in Sweden with the Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions, creating recommendations for all of Sweden’s higher education with the goal of getting more homogeneous recommendations. The background is that the recommendations differ quite a lot between educational institutions in Sweden. 

This will help us establish a standard view nationally on how to best utilize AI in learning and teaching. 

To conclude, AI gives us huge opportunities that can lead to great innovations, but we need to understand the technology, its possibilities, risks, and limitations. 

Thank you for listening.