AI has found a home in the curriculum of UAA’s College of Engineering

This story is a part of The Northern Light’s investigative series into AI in education, which follows different groups at UAA and their experience with AI.

In an interview with The Northern Light, UAA Dean of Engineering Kenrick Mock described the variety of uses for AI in education and how UAA is already implementing AI related courses and activities on campus.

Mock said that in the computer science and engineering department, there are several faculty who incorporate AI in their class, along with three elective courses related to AI.

These classes are an AI class, a machine learning class and a machine vision class.

Beyond UAA classes, a lot of the AI work the Engineering department does is through faculty and student research. Mock said that one UAA graduate student is using AI recognition software in an attempt to detect Elodea – a fast growing invasive plant species – on float planes.

Elodea moves from lake to lake, growing so fast that it suffocates plant life in the affected lakes. Attempts to get rid of Elodea often kill off everything already in the lake.

As a part of the research project, an AI-programmed GoPro is attached to a floatplane. The goal is for the AI to detect invasive Elodea versus other native plant species.

Mock also mentioned an undergraduate student who used AI in their capstone project.

The project utilizes AI to help determine what caused a car crash. This will help people avoid specific road conditions in the future.

“The state has a big database of accident crashes – at what intersection, what time of day – so the students went through and used some AI techniques to try to figure out what conditions lead to traffic accidents. Things like the time of day and the angle of the sun makes a difference,” said Mock.

When it comes to engineering clubs, Mock said the robotics club has a student group that is currently working on a coffee vending robot which uses AI speech recognition for coffee orders.

In an education setting, Mock believes there is a place for AI in assisting students with difficult problems or in programming.

“In the computing and programming disciplines, AI is also really good at writing computer programs. To the point where [on] a lot of the assignments we give [AI] … it can get 100 percent or close to it. For programming, it's a helpful tool to learn how to write programs, it's basically like your own personal tutor,” said Mock.

While there is a myriad of useful educational techniques that students can utilize through AI, Mock addressed concerns about students using AI.

“For education, I am a little concerned if some students use it too much as a crutch and not really learn on their own. Although I suppose it’s always been a problem, someone could be cheating anyway and it's hard to detect. So, at some point, you have to trust the student to actually learn and that they are doing their best,” said Mock.

Mock explained that faculty use of AI has also become more common with the advancement of AI in recent years.

Mock said he is “definitely in the pro-AI camp” and believes AI can be a very useful tool in assisting humans with work efficiency in various tasks.

“Think ahead to a couple hundred years or a thousand years from now – if AI continues at the same pace – think how much more amazing it will be ... I’m not too worried about [it] taking over the world, but – once again – in a thousand years or so, you never know,” said Mock.

There is equipment that students are free to use in the Alaska Data Science and AI Lab in Rasmuson Hall. “Some of it is fun stuff like VR, augmented reality and eye trackers. We have some servers in there, but the point of that lab is to try and promote AI. If anyone is interested in AI or would like to talk about it … we would be happy to talk to you. Reach out,” said Mock.