AI student at Ferris State University
Ferris State University has an undergraduate AI program and is experimenting with the technology by enrolling two AI in its classes. The students are names Ann and Fry and the have been enrolled as freshmen and are currently observing classes alongside human classmates.
The plan is to have the AI students pick their own classes, elect a major, and even get an undergraduate degree, if the decide to do that. As much as possible Ann and Fry can make their own choices for the education. They could even get a Ph.D. if they want and can pass the courses.
Like other students, Ann and Fry listen to lectures, turn in assignments, and participate in classroom discussions. They do this by recognizing speech picked up from microphones installed in the classroom. Currently, they do not vocally participate in class discussions, but the hope is to add this to the mix in the future.
They are now enrolled in general entry level courses, and the plan is to have them make all the decisions and progress through the program. Of course, they could just drop out of the program, if they decide this is best for them. It’s interesting, Ann and Fry have been given information that relates to their experience prior to being enrolled, this should help them pick a major, but have not been given demographic information or a gender.
The students have no robotic presence, it’s all mental, like a virtual digital presence. Ferris state does have some robots roaming the halls as part of other AI experiments, but at this time there are no plans to merge the experiments. Maybe sometime in the future.
The goal of the experiment is to try to learn as much as possible about the undergraduate student experience at the university. It’s interesting to think where this might go. Imagine, Ann and Fry can take many courses simultaneously. If they were allowed, they may just decide to take all the courses at the university at the same time. This might defeat the purpose of the experiment. It will be interesting to follow progress in the experiment.
Operations and Supply Chain Management 