Hello and welcome to your South Florida.

I'm Arlene Bornstein.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is software that's programmed to think intelligently from chatbots like ChatGPT that can help write and brainstorm to virtual assistant technology like Amazon's Alexa, helping with daily tasks.

The recent emergence of AI is reshaping our way of life.

AI is considered by many to be the start of a new industrial revolution, already transforming industries like health care, finance and media.

And as these industries and others continue to implement AI, they're looking for a workforce with the skills to keep up with this evolving technology.

Today, we're exploring how some South Florida colleges and universities are incorporating AI into their programs, helping to prepare students with the tools they'll need to have a competitive advantage in their fields.

In Palm Beach County, Florida, Atlantic University students and researchers are using their power of AI to develop innovative ways to study the brain, while also examining the long term implications of AI.

Here to share more on that is Doctor Ellen Barenholtz, co-founder of Force Machine Perception and Cognitive Robotics Lab and associate director of four center for the Future Mind.

Thank you so much for joining us.

How interesting.

Thank you for having me.

I really appreciate it.

Absolutely.

So tell us some of the research being done at the MPCa lab and the lab's mission.

Your research focuses in particular is interesting.

You're using robots to understand how the brain works.

Yes.

So the lab was founded really in the early stages of this beginning of this revolution, out of artificial intelligence.

And we realized very quickly that the broad range of applications of this new technology weren't really being explored as optimally, because the technology was kind of living in, in computer science and in engineering.

And my home is in science and the data generating fields.

And the purpose of the lab was to actually form a kind of a nexus.

How could we take this incredible, revolutionary new technology and apply it to, uh, problems that are of interest to scientists and to health-related fields?

The lab really was this this kind of a new experiment in taking a brand new technology.

That's that was that people are still trying to understand its limitations and its capabilities and handing it off to, uh, scientists and students from across a broad, diverse range of different fields.

Um, so we would we're brought in students from biology, chemistry, psychology, neuroscience and teamed up with other faculty to see whether this technology could actually be applied to, to diverse areas that that traditional techniques might not be effective at at looking at.

(Arlene) Ethics is a big issue when it comes to this type of research.

Talk about AI and how do you navigate this.

Obviously there's benefits, but there could also be some challenges in some.

(Elan) Ways what we have now is an intelligence that is very human like for the first time, these are computers that can really understand language, think like humans, reason, plan.

And people worry if these things are going to in some ways usurp human jobs and human purpose.

That's one ethical consideration that people are concerned with, my personal opinion and our philosophy in the lab is that although this is a disruptive technology, and it's certainly going to change the way people operate and work, it's actually going to facilitate.

It's going to make people more efficient.

It's going to allow them to do things that are more interesting and creative.

Think back to accounting.

You know, before Excel and before spreadsheets, you had to have a human uh, do every single calculation in a row.

Now, we can, of course, apply computers to do those kind of laborious tasks.

This is something very similar in some ways.

Instead of having to read through an article painstakingly and take notes on every single detail, you can ask the artificial intelligence to find the relevant information and to summarize that information for you.

So one, I don't personally believe that we're talking about the replacement of humans.

Instead, we're seeing an enhancement of humans.

Another ethical issue is the misuse and potential abuse of these technologies.

And again, my philosophy here is that, of course, these are powerful tools, and we do need to be concerned about them being used improperly and incorrectly.

However, the best defense against that is for us to hand off this technology to the people who are going to use it for good purposes.

And that's really the foundational principle of why our lab was founded.

We're taking scientists and health related officials and individuals and telling them and providing them with the capacity to use technology to build something amazing, to try to cure diseases, to do diagnosis, and to come up with technologies that can help people.

(Arlene) Let's talk about the research teams who work so hard.

The academic background.

What do they come?

Where do they come from?

How impactful is it having a multidisciplinary approach when it comes to this type of research?

(Elan) We have people who come from computer science naturally, but also from biology, psychology, neuroscience and also epidemiology is one area that I've been particularly focused on for the past few years.

And this leads to a kind of an interesting environment in which people with very diverse, uh, skill sets and very diverse knowledge bases are all coming together and looking at the same core technology, but trying to understand different kinds of problems.

(Arlene) So students who are involved and immersed in all this, I'm wondering, what do they do in the future?

How do they use this knowledge for their own career path?

I like to think that historically we have had a tremendous a really successful track record in placing students in really wonderful future career paths.

Students have gone on to very prestigious institutions Stanford, MIT, and also moved on to companies like Twitter and Facebook.

And some have also gone on to start up startups and founded individual companies.

And the reason they've had such success is because they are given an advantage of what's turning out to be.

I think it goes without saying one of the most, if not the most important technological advances of our lifetime, if not the past century.

And so the advantage of learning about and becoming expert in this technology and specifically learning how to how this technology applies to a particular domain and a particular field, is where the lab really has shown tremendous success.

We have this notion of sort of skipping the line, uh, typically in order to become a professional in artificial intelligence, you usually have to go through a very extensive training programs all the way up through a master's, certainly, and maybe even a PhD in computer science.

And our philosophy is we will give you the tools, uh, here's the the meat and potatoes of how these, these systems work, how you apply them to data.

Now go off and do something with it.

Take it to the data that you care about, whatever your particular passion is, whether it's in biology, chemistry or neuroscience, social media, whatever the case may be, or even some commercial application.

We provide people with that ticket to go and take this, this red-hot technology and apply it in their specific areas.

(Arlene) It certainly sounds like they're ahead of the game learning what they're learning far ahead of the curve.

Um Four also has the Gruber AI sandbox, which houses a center for the future mind.

Talk to us about what the sandbox is and how it fits into your work.

(Elan) It's the sandbox was, uh, was actually the product of a couple of different things coming together.

Uh, Ruben Gruber, who is the inspiration for the sandbox it carries his name, saw that there was something special happening in our lab where these students from very diverse backgrounds and faculty were getting together and thinking about some of these very cutting edge problems using this new technology and thinking very innovatively.

And he had the vision to bring all these different kinds of people together, and to think about how we can inspire both scientific research and innovation, and also potential entrepreneurship.

And the sandbox is a place that the houses, as you mentioned, the center for Future Mind.

It also houses our lab, the Machine Perception and Cognitive Robotics lab, and it is its own entity in some ways that houses these completely different pieces.

And the goal of the sandbox is to bring together all of these things, both the research.

People who are knee deep in the computation, who know how to build artificial intelligence systems are getting together with people who are thinking about entrepreneurship.

How do we take the discoveries and the products of the lab and turn them into potentially into life changing health advances, things that could actually be brought to market and make the kind of impact that only really commercial applications can end up doing.

And of course, this has implications not only for the discoveries, but for the students themselves who can go out and into the world and potentially found companies and bring these things to the world.

Um, the center for Future Mind is kind of a think tank whose job it is to think about the broader implications.

What does it mean to have artificial intelligence systems that maybe are even going to surpass human intelligence?

What is that going to mean for the future of humanity?

(Arlene) Absolutely.

And that being said, how do you convince people that they can trust AI and use it to their advantage?

(Elan) So like, like any technology, I think what's really critical here is we don't we shouldn't be afraid of the capabilities of this technology.

What we need to be concerned with is making sure that the right people and the right mindset is being used.

That when although these are powerful tools and tools that we don't fully understand yet, ultimately it really comes down to people.

People's intentions and goals as they're developing and applying these tools.

And that's really the founding principle of the sandbox and of the lab, is that we need to get this incredibly powerful technology into the right hands.

People are going to use it to create cures for diseases.

People are going to use it for diagnostics.

People are going to use it to create products that are going to help people and bring something wonderful into the world.

(Arlene) Powerful tools in the right hands, indeed.

Thank you, Doctor Barinholtz, for joining us today.

We appreciate it.

(Elan) Thank you.

It was a pleasure talking to you.

(Alene) Recently, the your South Florida team stopped by Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus to get a firsthand look at their AI center and how their magic program is utilizing AI to help students pursue in-demand careers in the fields of animation and gaming.

Take a look.

(Antonio) We are right now at the Artificial Intelligence Center at Wolfson Campus in downtown Miami.

This is a space that was uniquely created with the advanced computing power to really help any student come and learn about artificial intelligence, but also with the spaces to be interactive, to be creative, to learn about robotics.

At the same time, we have this space created for events and community gathering and workshop info sessions, because we want to attract the community to demystify AI, to show what artificial intelligence can do, and to really learn how to apply it quickly in an ethical way.

Miami Dade College has created the first associate and bachelor's degrees in the state of Florida for artificial intelligence, and these programs are uniquely designed to help anyone in the community learn skills to adapt AI into their day to day, their work, or their future job.

We do have the college level students, but most of the participants in the program so far, these are working professionals that all learners between 30 and 50 years old, they are more than 50% of the participants.

And we realize that they're coming to get specific skills to learn about AI, to learn about machine learning, to learn about the applications that they can bring to their own job and quickly be productive.

And some of them are even creating new companies after learning about these AI skills.

That is not just about embedding into what they do, they come up with a brand new idea that they want to develop to create a new product, or a new company, or a new software to apply AI in our society.

It's not just about technology.

It's not about those super specialized technicians or computer scientists or data analysts bringing artificial intelligence.

This is about every single sector, every single person.

And it's as simple as a restaurant applying AI to be more productive and efficient.

Or when you're doing gaming and you're developing games that you can learn about AI early on in your career.

When you graduate, when you have the right skills to apply what every company is looking for, someone that can embed AI in the day to day.

Very few people know that we've been teaching AI for ten years now.

Here at magic.

Magic is the Miami Animation and Gaming International complex at Miami Dade College, Downtown Miami.

At the Wolfson campus, we offer two academic programs, one in animation and game art, and the other one is on game development and design.

Animation and game art is for students seeking to learn how to do storytelling using the medium of animation.

Game art is when you create animations for a video game, and then our other major is game development.

These are the programmers, these are the architects of the video game.

Game design are the individuals that are doing the level designs, the environments.

You know, for a video game.

The students are actually doing one of the live workshops that we're having.

It's a two-hour workshop where they're kind of working on some kind of foundational skill, and it's not only on site here, but it's also online and kind of work on your portfolio pieces or whichever principle that you need to enhance in your skill set.

The bootcamp is part of the animation incentive program that we actually implemented last year, together with Chemical Mfgm and the Careersource South Florida.

The Miami Animation Incentive Program is a program that will allow studios from all over the world to hire Miami animators against a tax incentive that the employer gets.

These three boot camps, workshops that were offering their 100% free.

And the goal is to actually get, you know, the animators more versed and more proficient.

So it's part of this overall program that was created to get employers to hire local.

Right now, the industry is evolving at a rapid pace.

Now we have AI that's getting implemented into the workflow in the pipeline, and we all have different like perspectives on, especially for the art community of how AI is being used.

But we have to keep understanding that AI is here to stay, we have to understand how to use that tool.

I'm halfway through the program, I still have one more year left.

And right now I just had so much fun doing, like the storyboarding, the character designs.

I've learned so much from this that I'm just so excited for what the future holds for me.

AI is a little scary in my opinion.

Um, I feel like it may threaten some jobs out there, but I really think it could be put into some helpful use in terms of like doing the really monotonous, tedious stuff.

Since we're humans, it's really like up to us whether we put it to good use or not.

(Sandra) Here, you kind of have more freedom to create, and so you can implement AI in an ethical way to create a unique game mechanic or unique art style, and then combine that with your art style and take it to the next level, because you're not going to make that your core art.

It's just going to give you an idea of where you can go.

Because as humans, we have our limitations, unfortunately, of how we perceive the world.

We're kind of caught in our own little matrix or box.

But here I is, ending up pulling down those walls and giving us other avenues of thinking so that we can implement that into our workflow.

I think AI is a double-edged sword.

My knee jerk reaction is to say AI no bueno, right?

I've heard countless horror stories about AI replacing jobs within the art and animation industry.

And that's scary for me.

As someone who is studying this, right, we need to find better applications of it than to replace what we, the artists bring to the table.

Because at the end of the day, no matter how smart the AI programs can get, you cannot replace the human soul.

Our mission really is jobs.

We work with our local partners and employers to find out what they need.

What skills are they looking for?

During the programme, we have a mentorship programme where we partner with animation studios from all over the country and locally as well, where students receive mentorship from industry professionals.

And after we rely on also our industry partners to provide our students with internships, you know, first entry level position jobs.

Bottom line, you know, like every other business, if you cut costs and if you increase profit, then we have a winner.

Carnival Cruise Lines, they're gamifying all their ships and they're hiring older programmers.

The construction industry here in Miami now, they're bidding projects in virtual reality, and they're hiring our students to create those simulations so they can bid projects.

So it's a win-win for everybody, lower their costs, increase their profit, and we get jobs.

So it's so important that Miami-Dade College invest in these academic programs to offer a very, very reasonable pricing to our community because they end up being high paying jobs.

You know, students get a very, very decent salary, not only changes their lives, but changes the lives of their whole household and therefore change the lives of our community.

Now, after ten years, we're celebrating ten years of magic next year.

I can tell you as a fact that we are getting jobs.

Industry is hiring our students and we're making an impact here.

I know many people are still wondering if AI is for me.

Should I learn about AI?

Really?

AI is not replacing jobs.

People that know AI are the ones that are going to replace the ones that don't know about AI.

Miami-Dade College is here for that purpose, to help the community, to help anyone that wants to learn about artificial intelligence to do it.

Don't be afraid.

You don't need to have any previous experience.

You can come to Miami Dade College.

Our courses start August 26th and they are available with scholarships, tuition scholarships for every Miami Dade County resident.

(Alene) Joining me now to share how Florida International University is preparing the next generation of journalists for the world of AI is Doctor Susan Jacobson, director of the Lee Kaplan School of Journalism and Media at FIU.

Welcome.

Thank you for being here.

(Susan) Thank you for having me.

(Arlene) So we all know that AI is emerging, and now schools have the challenge of implementing this in their curriculums and policies.

Tell us how that's going.

There’s kind of two groups of AI.

There's the generative and there's the assistive.

And right now we're having problems with the generative AI, AI that actually creates content.

And the place where we're seeing it and trying to figure out how to deal with it is where large language models can actually write papers and passages for student papers, and sometimes even just automated tools like Grammarly that they've been using for a long time, will now rewrite entire passages.

And when you're talking about students taking a class on learning how to write or they're being evaluated for their writing, you know, that's just not something that we can accept.

We’re learning now, just now how to how to deal with that.

(Arlene) This is a learning experience and a learning curve for professors and students.

Tell us how you tackle that part of AI.

(Susan) Okay so from the student perspective, our students, you know, they have busy lives, they have families, they have jobs, they have school on top of that a lot of times.

So sometimes it's very tempting to use a shortcut like a ChatGPT to write your paper.

And we understand that pressure, but they really should not be able to do that.

And they don't understand also that these large language models, they're terrible writers.

So they would be so much better writing their own copy instead of using the ChatGPT because their own voice is much better, much more authentic.

ChatGPT does things like it makes stuff up, it gives you fake references, you know, it's just not a good writing tool if you just use it, you know, do a copy paste.

And what we have at FIU is we're using some AI detectors.

They're not perfect, but they will show us.

They'll give a score to a student paper as to, you know, what's the likelihood that all or most of it was written by an AI.

And so we use that as a guide.

So generally speaking, we know that if the student has kind of a low AI score, then we're not going to worry about it.

But if they have a high one like close to 100, then, you know, we have to have a conversation with that student.

(Arlene) There are some advantages, though, to implementing this type of technology.

Tell us about that.

(Susan) So in in journalism and media there's a few things that are really great for our students.

One is any kind of AI tool that helps you with video or audio editing.

In the area of video editing, for example, Adobe Premiere is a great video editor that has incorporated some AI tools so you can literally shoot your own video, bring your video into this program, it generates a transcript, and you can edit the edit your video by editing the transcript.

Now, you may need to go back and make some adjustments and move things around.

But as a first pass editing tool, it's fantastic And I grew up, um, editing tape for video, and I saw the transition from there to to digital, which is much easier.

And now this from, you know, to just be able to use the transcript, it's a leap in improvement.

There's a similar there's similar products for audio.

There's a product called descript that will allow podcasters, for example, to take their very long, um, audio sessions and, you know, edit them pretty quickly using the transcript.

Those tools are fantastic, and I encourage students to use them.

Um, the AI tools have also been used to generate code for websites to do some little programming, web based programming, you know, it'll help generate some code for you.

I think all of that is is perfectly okay.

The image editor I is the still image editors.

There kind of a mixed bag.

Sometimes they're okay to use because like if you're doing a flyer, for example, or a social media post and you need a graphic, they can sometimes generate a perfectly okay image.

The situation there is you just have to look at it carefully, you know, to make sure there's no obvious errors like extra fingers or misspelled words.

(Arlene) You know.

There is that idea where people do have these deep fakes that we've seen.

That is I feel a danger of I and I'm sure as a, you know, someone who leads a college in this world, we have to be careful with that.

What are your thoughts on deep fakes and the negative aspects of AI?

(Susan) So specifically talking about deep fakes.

One thing I can say is that the video deepfakes like if you've seen there's been some examples of Obama, you know, saying crazy things, the video of a real person.

It's not that great at this point.

It's going to get better though, right?

I think it kind of falls back to sort of some basic media literacy principles of being able to check your sources.

Where did this come from?

If it seems like it's fake, it might be fake, especially if it makes you angry or makes you sad.

Or you go like, oh, what is that about?

I can't believe that that's always a cue for you to check, to make sure that you know, what you're looking at is legitimate.

(Arlene) And journalism students, what's their feedback?

How do they feel?

Is it a mixed bag?

I know when I say it's a mixed bag, for me.

(Susan) It is a mixed bag.

I would say again, the editing tools are really helpful.

The video editing tools, the audio editing tools, um, the other tools, again, students are kind of naive that they're not completely sure of, you know, what the limitations of these tools are at this point?

Because we're early in the game, I think they will become more savvy as time goes by, you know, and they'll be able to use them more wisely.

Um, and, and part of what we plan to do is to figure out how to integrate good use of AI tools, especially things for data analysis, for doing some content generation under specific circumstances, like writing a summary, um, under specific, but in, in a specific circumstance.

And part of since they're journalism students, it's very important to excuse me to be very transparent with your audience about, you know, what the source of your material is.

If it is generated by an AI, you want to let your audience know that.

(Arlene) Tell us about some other cool technologically forward things happening at FIU.

The immersive studio for Altered Reality.

That sounds so.

Cool.

(Susan) Yes.

The immersive studio for Altered Reality is our immersive media facility.

We just built it a couple years ago, and we have students in our new game and animation program that use it to create their projects.

We have what's called a volumetric studio.

And what this is, if you're familiar with Pokemon Go, you know how you can see Pikachu in your in your environment?

Well, the Volumetric studio is basically a series of cameras in a circle that creates a 3D video.

So it could be a person, it could be an object.

And then you can take that video file.

We call it an asset.

And you can you can see it like you would see a Pokemon Go character.

You can insert it into an immersive environment like Unity or Unreal, which is the platform that they use for games.

You know, you can use it in films and animation, but and it's a complete 3D character.

So, so yeah, so we're working on that and we're, we're trying to figure out how to integrate that into the journalism business.

Um, we haven't gotten there yet.

I'm trying to.

Think of the ways.

But we're working a second.

I'll get back to.

You on that.

Yes.

Data visualization, for example.

Yes.

For sure.

Yeah.

(Arlene) You have the big networks.

They show all the data and will be pointing at it.

So I can see maybe something happening with that, making it more compelling and interesting to take in a lot of data.

(Susan) Yes.

And TV.

(Arlene) Usually.

(Susan) TV networks are using what's called virtual sets.

And they use these technologies.

They'll use Unity or Unreal, which again is like a game platform to create sets that aren't really there but really look like they're there.

(Arlene) It's great that the students are on the forefront of all this and they're learning this.

But can journalism survive?

AI (Susan) I absolutely believe that journalism will survive.

AI there's no there's no substitute for actual on the ground reporting.

One of the things that we are seeing, however, is increasingly, if you ask anyone under the age of 40, surveys show that a lot of them say that they get their news from social media, and they're not following the New York Times on Instagram.

Often they're following what we call informal information providers.

These are influencers and podcasters, you know, who often have a topic that they talk about on a regular basis with their audience, and they're not necessarily trained in the norms of journalism.

One of our missions is to help these informal information providers understand better the norms of journalism and how to be good information providers, and also to prepare, prepare our journalism students to be these kinds of informal information providers.

(Arlene) Giving news first and then learning how to do news second.

That's so crazy to me.

But the responsible implementation of AI, I think, is the key.

Yes.

Thank you so much for joining us, Doctor Jacobson.

(Susan) My pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

(Arlene) Absolutely.