SPEAKER_00
You're listening to the Higher Ed Marketer, the podcast for marketing professionals in higher education. Join us every week as we talk to the industry's greatest minds in student recruitment, donor relations, marketing trends, new technologies, and much more. If you're looking for conversations centered around where marketing in higher ed is going, this podcast is for you.
Let's get into the show.
SPEAKER_04
Welcome to the Higher Ed Marketer podcast. My name is Troy Singer and I'm here with my co-host and friend Bart Kaler. Back in June of 2023, there was an excellent conference titled the hashtag higher ed conference when Bart was joined by two other panelists and they had a wonderful discussion about generative AI.
It was popular. People got a lot from it. So we thought that we would bring them back together here on the Higher Ed Marketer podcast and share some of that same information.
So today we are joined by Gil Appel. He is the assistant professor of marketing at George Washington University School of Business and Rafi Dismonian, VP and Chief Strategy Officer at ERI Design Incorporated. Bart, I've listened to the original panel and I love that panel, but you all did an equal, wonderful job today on the podcast.
SPEAKER_02
Thanks, Troy. That was a lot of fun. I love talking to these guys and we just, we had such a dynamic way of communicating on stage at George Washington University.
At that time, we joked about the fact that we were supposed to do an intro for generative AI and chat GPD in 30 minutes and take questions. We just did not really have much time to unpack as much as we wanted to. So this episode today, I think we're probably about 45 minutes, 47 minutes, a little longer than we typically go, but I think that it gives us an opportunity to really kind of unpack a little bit more about what each of us are thinking, the types of things we're doing.
There's a lot of show notes in this one as far as links to some different sites and different folks that we want people to be able to reach out to. Then we also talked a lot about the conference that's going to be coming up, the higher ed marketer virtual conference on generative AI and how to use that in higher ed marketing going to be on October 24th. You can go to the higher ed marketer.
com and learn more about that and get your tickets, but I'm just so excited to have these guys back in back in together. And Bart, I'll just mention that we are
SPEAKER_04
recording this in August of 2023. So if you're listening to this in 2024, some of it might have changed, but I think the foundation, the thinking, the approach I think will still be valid. Here's our conversation about generative AI.
Gil and Rafi, we love starting our conversations with our guests out by asking them to share something that they've recently learned that would be considered fun, surprising or interesting by our guests. So Gil, if I could ask you to share something first.
SPEAKER_01
I got to go first. That's always fun. I don't know.
As we say, things happen so fast in these worlds and I'm working on a project that I'm trying to understand how people interact with AI platforms. And I downloaded like 250,000 interactions with Me Journey. And I'm seeing how people choose to move from one picture to the other.
And just observing this, how people learn and how people use a generative AI platform is amazing to me. Like their choices and movement. This is beautiful.
SPEAKER_03
So what I learned recently is how powerful a new AI tool that I've never used can be, which is Fireflies, a note taking tool. And Bart, you recommended a peer of Fireflies, I think a few months ago. And I finally got around to testing it.
And wow, really impressive. And a time saver. It not only takes notes, but it also synthesizes notes into key action items, which is just such a huge help.
So yeah.
SPEAKER_02
We just switched over to Fireflies ourselves because the previous one went out of business. We got an email on Thursday evening one day that said, Oh, we didn't get second round funding. Sorry, get your recordings.
So that's part of what we'll talk about here is just how
SPEAKER_01
volatile this AI market is. So I've seen that happen actually. So part of my course and part of like second stuff I do is like do workshops or marketing executives that want to do no coding analytics, you know, how to get all these access to tools that have like simple GUIs and like double click or just look at things and really use their experience and knowledge to get so much from what they know and from the tools that are there.
And like every time I do this presentation, like half of the tools are gone because the companies do not get funding or got sold to someone else. Yes. It's pretty prevalent.
SPEAKER_04
We are all together because Bart, Rafi and Gil were at the hashtag higher ed conference and gave a wonderful AI presentation, which you can find on Bart's YouTube channel and we'll put it in the notes and Bart wanted to replicate that. Now to the other two, I must say Bart doesn't mind when I refer to him as a AI geek. And I think from that conversation, both the attendance and anyone that's viewed it came up with a lot of knowledge.
The way Bart started that conversation off, I'm going to start that conversation off with a quote from Alvin Toffler. And he said back in 1970, the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. Now I know enough about the three of you that you are proponents, you are evangelists, if I can use that term for AI and you want to see the adoption of it.
So I'm going to step aside and let Bart start off the conversation about how we can elevate this within our higher ed marketing recruiting or the higher ed community in general.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, one thing I wanted to just start off with and Gil, you and I have talked about this via email. I think Rafi, we've mentioned it as well as just the, when we talk about the Toffler quote with the illiterate of the 21st century, let's talk a little bit about the illiteracy around artificial intelligence. Because I mean, as you all know, I've talked to people and it's sometimes polarizing.
It's sometimes people are like, oh yeah, this is great. I want to learn more. Tell me more Bart, let's talk about it.
And other people are like, well, hold on here. What is this? I've heard about this. This, you know, all I remember is Terminator and all this, this is going to be bad.
So I mean, what are you guys hearing and how does that play into this whole illiteracy? I know specifically Gil, I know you've been thinking a lot more about the illiteracy, but Rafi, what are you kind of hearing as you're intergaging with different higher ed folks? Yeah, I think there's
SPEAKER_03
definitely palpable recalcitrance that I see from some folks about it in general that just categorically, they've already made up their mind about it. But with that said, I think folks that are introducing themselves to it are finding its benefit more and more. I'm sure you guys can relate to this, but there's this kind of a hub moment that someone who hasn't experienced it yet, when they finally get a chance to see just how powerful and its capabilities, I think there's this light bulb moment that everyone has.
I'm loving to see that light bulb go off on more and more of my on top of my colleagues heads. Yeah. Yeah. How about you Gil, what are you kind of
SPEAKER_02
seeing and how is that playing into what you're learning about the illiteracy? Yeah, so I have
SPEAKER_01
a working paper, hopefully by the time it goes out, it'll be more than one. But looking exactly about how AI illiteracy affects the likelihood of adoption of AI. And what we actually show is that not always high AI knowledge will make you more likely to adopt.
So what is the how moment that Rafi says? Like there's a lot of people with lower knowledge of AI that will be really excited and will really feel adopting AI is like magic. And I think that this might accelerate adoption of the population that we're not thinking of. So they're now at this moment that we're blocking their access because they don't know about it.
They might fear it and they and once they see it in action, right? So they learn more about it. They might be a lot more excited about AI, even then you and I will be because because we know what AI can do. We press it's not magical.
It's like we know how the trick is done. But for a large, large audience, you have something that will be like magic for them. It will be not just a tool, but an excitement and experience.
And this is what I think that we need to bring it more people. Yeah. And I think that we talked about
SPEAKER_02
this on stage back in June when we were at George Washington University. We did a we asked the audience, we said, how many people have used chat GPT? And unsurprisingly, I think most of the audience raised their hand. And then when we asked the deeper question of how many of you've subscribed to chat GPT or you're paying for the access to the service, it went down to about four people out of an audience of about 350 people.
And while including the three of us. And so yeah. Yeah. And so I think that what that told me, and I think we talked about a little bit afterwards is that I think and it's okay because a lot of people are in this boat. And so I don't want to I don't want to disrespect anybody who's listening.
But if you've went to chat GPT and you've just opened it up and you've typed in write me a blog post about penguins, you're going to be a little bit disappointed because it's not going to be much more than you're like, it's this is, it seems novel to you. It might seem like a novelty that what's the big deal. But I think it's when you start to really understand and go a little bit deeper, you know, that you're going to get to Rafi's aha moment where, oh, this is more.
I mean, I remember for myself back in January and December when I was playing around with it, you know, I was just starting to hit the news and I was like, Oh, what's this stuff people are talking about? And I read a couple of things and I was like, Oh, I, so I, I have to go back into my, you know, my history to see what my first prompt was. But I know that my second prompt was to get it to talk like Yoda. And I was like, Oh, that's kind of fun.
And it was, it was kind of silly. And it was a party trick. But then I think the more I've realized, and we can get into this a little bit deeper on some of the stuff I've been doing lately, that is kind of just blowing my mind on the amount of time I'm saving.
That was the kind of things that I think that until people start to really understand how to start using it and go deeper, that's where it's going to be challenging. Gil, what are you seeing when you talk to people like
SPEAKER_01
that? So the moment I see with people is their second form. So not the same in the same conversation. So once I understand it's a conversational AI, you can say, this was not good, I want it this way.
And then you get that the AI is not just something that with an input and an output, it's something that's iterative that you can talk to and get like improve over time. Because a lot of people that are disappointed with chat, I talked to at least, they put a prompt in, they get a result, they're not happy with it, they say, I'm not an expert in this and move on. And I think this iterative process is something that once people get to it, it's like their biggest
SPEAKER_02
aha moment, at least in chat. And I'm sure that's kind of what you're seeing with the mid-journey
SPEAKER_01
research you're doing as well. Oh yeah, I would be like, this is not really on video, but I could have shown you like some images that were mind-blowing. And you can see how people are, okay, this is not what I want, I want this type, I want to focus on this type of art.
And it's really, really interesting to see how people think and how people interact with it. That's great.
SPEAKER_02
As I'm sure you have known that the whole idea of artificial intelligence and especially things like chat GPT are really starting to transform higher ed marketing. I really don't want anyone on this podcast to be left behind. So I really want to invite you to join the top minds in higher education at the inaugural higher ed marketer virtual AI summit.
It's going to be on October 24. And then just one day, you're going to be able to discover practical strategies to leverage AI as your marketing collaborator and walk away with a lot of new skills as you do that. During the summit, you're going to learn how to create personalized outreach at scale, streamlined content creation, boost your productivity and so much more.
Join Troy and I as we learn directly from innovative leaders and many of those who have been our past guests, including Jamie Hunt, CMO at Old Dominion, Brian Piper from the University of Rochester and Kyle Campbell, the education marketer. You're also going to be meeting several of our new friends such as Rafi Deshline of ERI Design, Dr. Gilappel of the George Washington University School of Business, Dr.
Jules White of Vanderbilt and artist Kadoo from element 451 in Austin Marshall and how to use AI for your graphic needs. Seats are limited for this can't miss event. Visit the higher ed marketer.
com that's the higher ed marketer.com and use code podcast for 20% off your ticket. There's also rates available for groups of tickets so you can find out more at the site.
I want you to unlock the power of AI to enhance enrollment giving and beyond at your institution. Join us on October 24. How about you, Rafi? What are some of the things that you're kind of seeing?
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, you know, Gil, you mentioned the iterative process and I think that's such an important point to emphasize. Similar to working with a colleague, similar to working with an agency or a firm, it requires back and forth to really get it right. So I think to whatever extent folks can get comfortable leaning in, experimenting, pushing it in different ways and really teasing out some of the usable nuggets and threads that can help elevate what we do.
I see this as being one of the big wins and you know, this has not changed since we convened in DC a few months ago, which is the fact that I see the biggest benefit freeing us up to do more complex tasks, freeing us up to do more meaningful work. And I think for me, that's what gets me excited and I can see that's also folks that are becoming familiar with it are identifying that. So I just want to cut in here
SPEAKER_01
because it's super interesting. I think that this is exactly where you see what everyone's saying now that AI will not take your jobs or people that know how to use AI will, because it's those interactions and those things that you're saying, it's all about domain knowledge. If I go in and ask to chat to talk about, I don't know, surgery, I might not get good results, but if I ask it to go and talk about stuff that I understand on, I can use it to really accelerate my process.
Someone says the chat gets more than half of the programming questions wrong. Yes, on the first try, but if you tell it like this was wrong, I need this. If you know what questions to ask, then you'll get an amazing result.
I code 100 times faster and I catch it
SPEAKER_02
doing mistakes all the time. Yeah, I love that. And that's one of the things I started adopting the phrase cobot when I talk to people because we're writing a blog post that's coming out and my writer actually did the research and found out the first time that phrase was used and I can't remember who it was or what company.
But I came across it on a discovery channel, the default DeWalt tool factory, they have these three industrial robots that they call cobots because they're collaboratively working with the humans to produce these tools. And that's one of the things I've tried to help people understand is that, look, this is a tool. It's a tool in the toolbox and it happens to be a very smart tool, but it needs to be collaborative to your point, Gil.
It's not one of those things that you can just kind of press a button and it's going to just spit out higher ed marketing that's like, oh, wow, that's great. No, it's collaborative. I have to be the one that's kind of teaching it and guiding it along and it becomes a little bit of a super power for me because all of a sudden I've got this virtual assistant that can go deep with me on things and actually come up with ideas that I don't even think about that I can then say, okay, I like that one.
Let's talk more about that. And that iterative process, I think, is when you get the strongest and most valuable results. And I'm sure Gil, to your point about
SPEAKER_01
the programming, that's what you're realizing too. Yeah, it's like more like an iron man's suit than a superpower. It's something that you put on you and enhances what you can do.
You can be faster, stronger and better. But yeah.
SPEAKER_02
So let's talk a little bit about just some of the things that we're using it for. And I can go first. I've been doing a lot of creative art with Mid Journey and even Canva has some built-in tools.
I've been playing a lot with Photoshop Beta. And again, we're recording this in August, mid-August of 2023. So I'm going to, so far we've talked a lot about just some theory type stuff.
Now we're going to get into applications that might not be valuable tomorrow. But I think it's worth at least bringing up some of the things. I'm also using a lot of things as far as one thing I did yesterday is I do work with an organization and it's it's a accreditation organization that lists about 190 schools.
And each of the schools have different majors available. They have undergraduate, they have graduate. And one of the things I wanted to do is I have a school that's a member of that organization.
It's a faith-based organization. And I said, one of the marketing ideas we had was, okay, you've got this undergrad program that a lot of the schools have and you offer a graduate program. You're all peer institutions.
Let's build relationships with those schools that have the undergrad, but not the graduate level. And so I knew that the data was in there. And the only thing I had available to me was their website that was, you know, I could go in and go deep and find that data.
So I knew that you could scrape a website, but I didn't know how. So I asked Chat, tell me how to, how do I get this data? And it's so well, I can teach you how to do it. And I was like, please do.
And so it gave me six points about how to go into Chrome, go into developer mode, go to a certain tab, put this in, copy what I found and paste it into simple text. And I was like, and it said, do you understand everything? I said, I'm having a trouble with number eight. So it would go into deeper details.
I'm having trouble with this. And then once I was all done, it was like, okay, now do this. And so I did that.
And then I took that entire big, you know, dot txt file, and I threw it into cloud.ai. And I was like, okay, I got all this data now. This is what I want you to tell me.
And in three seconds, I had all the schools that offered that undergraduate major that did not have the graduate major, the entire process took me about 20 minutes. And that just blew my mind. And Gil, you might say, oh, I could have done it in five, but no,
SPEAKER_01
but open AI has open as a web spray for built in now. So I didn't even know I should have asked
SPEAKER_02
open AI, do you have that plugin? But but even there, I mean, that just blew my mind that I could learn that skill without, you know, just being taught by some by by the generative AI.
SPEAKER_01
I know it's really impressive. Like, I have zero creativity and for one of four projects, I'm creating real life images that have like diverse racial profiles of people that we're using to test bias in AI. And we're telling subjects that these are real people and they believe them like only 10% think those are not real people.
And that's something I could have never done before, or coding tasks that take would have taken me months. And like, for example, for another project, we're analyzing shopping cart abandon. But the first time I analyzed the database like this to make it work and make it fit like the code I needed took me half a year.
Now I did it in three days. This is like, it's like unbelievable, because I know what I knew, I know what I need to do. So the thing is, if you don't know what you're doing, it might fit you so much bullshit that you'll make so many mistakes along the way.
It's very broad, very important to know what you're doing. Yeah, because that's when you I think you brought
SPEAKER_02
that up at the conference to Gil is the fact that you can't just press a button and then just
SPEAKER_01
copy and paste it because you know, if they can use it to read essays of students like applications. This was like the worst question ever, the scariest question. Yeah, because I mean, it does have a
SPEAKER_02
habit of hallucinating. And if you people don't know what that means, it means that it just makes stuff up to make it look good. It's kind of that fake it till you make it.
These chat tools do that a lot because that's what they're trained on is to just give you the next answer. And sometimes
SPEAKER_03
that next answer isn't a correct answer. One thing I'm noticing is more and more people are using AI writing tools as in lieu of Google, and including myself, I'm finding I'm getting more substantive on the nose responses versus having to sift through curated links. You know, many of them are sponsored links.
It kind of is a much more streamlined way to get quick info fast. You know, I would say using it as a writing assistant to help, for example, I will generate a letter and then at chat to chat to chat to chat to chat if there's a way to improve the letter for clarity or brevity or reduce word count, taking a bio and let's say we need 100 word version of it. I think that's really where it excels in the tasks of that nature.
So I'm saying I'm reviewing academic papers
SPEAKER_01
and sometimes I find myself right. This is wrong. This is bad.
This is poor. And I go and paste it and chat and say, oh, make it sound less nasty. It's like, or make sure that email I'm writing passes this, sends this message, but gently.
So it's like, yes, but if we continue doing this, will we be able to talk to other people when we don't have chat to filter what we're saying? Exactly. Exactly. Well,
SPEAKER_02
before I ask you guys, I know that we, during the conference, we talked a little bit about how much time we're saving each week and that's been a popular little, you know, short that I've had going out on, on LinkedIn and things. But before I do that, I want to just plug something that you guys are going to be a part of and Troy is going to be hosting on October 24th. We're going to have the first higher ed marketer virtual conference and it's going to be all about using gen, generative AI, using AI in your higher ed marketing and Dylan Raffi and Troy and I are going to kind of kick the day off with a conversation very similar to this, but it's going to, it's going to have to be that day because things are going to be changing so frequently.
But we also have a number of other people from Old Dominion University, from Vanderbilt, a lot of other folks that are kind of leading the charge in higher education marketing and how they're using AI and it's going to be very practical and pragmatic. And our goal is that after you spend the day with this eight hours of experts, you can walk away and start saving time each week and start, as Raffi said, focusing on some of those more complex tasks and thinking that really free you up on that. So real quick, how much time are you guys saving each week now? So I want to add before that because I went over
SPEAKER_01
the program idea. It's like our chat in the beginning is nice, but you brought some amazing people to do actual workshops. So what can people, people can actually take it and do and I think this will be really, really useful for almost anyone.
Well, Bart, first of all, I want to say
SPEAKER_03
how excited I am for that. And you put together rock star lineup of folks who are out there using it and can speak with a lot of authority about it. And I'm pretty excited to attend and be a small part of it.
You know, I think when we first met, I was, I think I said five to 10. And I'm going to increase that to 10 to 15. I think I've gotten better at using it.
And I think like anyone, the more familiarity you have with it, the more comfortable you become, and the more efficient as a tool can become. And I love, I got this from you, Bart, but thinking about it as a toolbox and not a tool, once you become familiar about just the breadth of its capabilities, I think it's a lot of fun to experiment different challenges with.
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, I have a problem with that question because it's not just time I'm saving, it's also forward-looking. But as I said, sometimes I can save weeks in every week, especially when it comes to code and running very complex code. But if something simple that I did today was going over all my in-class assignments and asking Chad to make it more clear, to make it not short, but make it longer, and then going over that text.
So I will save time later by students not understanding what I want from them and stuff like that. So it can save you time in the future as well. So by streamlining your assignment, by making, taking notes and getting you to do like goals and key tasks and stuff like that, it's more about more than saving time, but like shifting to a new new person now.
It's like saying how much time does a car save you when you had to walk before?
SPEAKER_02
Then it goes back to what you said earlier about the Ironman suit. I mean, Tony Stark doesn't measure what he's doing and how many hours he saved each week. It was what he can do now that get exponentially more powerful because he has that suit on.
And I think that's probably a better way to look at it is like, yes, I save 10, 15 hours a week, kind of like what Rafi said, but I'm also saving, like you said, the future time because how much time would it have taken me to find that research in what I did? Or how much would it have cost me to hire somebody who knew how to scrape to do that, to write the programming? And so had an idea that I wanted to communicate to them about how they could do some enrollment marketing. And it was an idea about using a, I'll just throw it out here because I think it's useful to understand. I had an idea for leasing an RV, putting a wrap around it and driving it to high school football games for tailgating in the fall.
And we're going to do, I was like, yeah, you could bring students with you, you can grill, you can do all this stuff, make it a party. And so I took it into mid journey on a road of prompt. And I said, show me this.
And I wrote a prompt of it, show it at golden hour in the evening. And so it generated this beautiful RV of these people standing around with eating and having a tailgate party with all the school colors. I took it into Photoshop, put their brand mark on it on part of the RV.
And in 10 minutes, I was done with a very clear visual representation of the idea. Back in the day, as a designer, I'd have to pull up my markers, I would do a sketch of it, I would marker it up, I would go and copy it, I'd scan it into my computer, I'd put it into my computer, I'd clean it up. It might have taken me three or four hours to get a really nice comprehensive idea on paper.
But again, 10 minutes. And people got it. I mean, it was like, they were excited.
It's like, oh yeah, we understand exactly what you're talking about. So there's just so many different ways that that goes out that way.
SPEAKER_01
I totally agree. There are so many things we can do. And the beautiful thing about it is like, it's just evolving.
It's just changing. And now, if you're unhappy with chat, you're saying it's getting dumber, then you can go to cloud, you can go to bar, you can go to Bing, you can go to thousand other solutions that are out there. And you're starting to get more and more dedicated, niche AIs that will be like really experts in the field that you're interested in.
It's just like, the thing is taking the time, sometimes, you know, it's not about saving time. It's like sitting like for half an hour or an hour thinking, where I can take it? What can I
SPEAKER_02
do with this now? Yeah, I've been following an expert on Instagram. His name is Justin Feinberg, young guy, really kind of dove in deep on it. And he actually has put together a product called Cassidy.
ai or Cassidyai.com. And we just subscribe to it. And basically what allows us to do is we can upload our entire blog, we can upload all of the white papers we've done, all of our HR materials, everything that we have as a company, Kailer Solutions, we upload it in there, and then we can create master prompts.
I can even upload my writing style. And it's trained on my writing style. So if some of my staff needs to say, Oh, I need to write a quick email draft for Bart, it's written in the style and tone that I typically write in.
And so it's becoming a hub that the rest of our team can go into to use, you know, use these tools, ask questions, say, Hey, what's our vacation policy? Or, Hey, give us three blog posts that Bart's written about, you know, this subject, because I mean, there's like 600 blog posts. Now, this is a really quick way for us to kind of have a hub on that. And that's the kind of safe that you know, what you said, Gil, with having specialized tools.
I mean, I've got a specialized tool just for my company now. And so that's the kind of stuff that we're going to see kind of coming out.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but careful. Yeah. I'm doubted because like you're going to the things that the writer guilt are crying now that they'll be replaced, you'll train everything on. So why do we need to do now? I have all your posts, I have all you right.
Maybe that's what my team will say.
SPEAKER_02
Or I can look at it to say what, you know, I don't need to be as deep on some of that stuff. And that changes. I mean, it's it is that double edged sword that we'll get to talk to about in a second.
SPEAKER_03
Rafi. No, I was just going to say one further thought that I've had since we last convened this goes out to the naysayers, the haters out there. And there are many that I've come in contact with regularly about AI is that it's going to lead to this intellectual atrophy over time.
And it's my belief, the more that I get to use it and understand what it can do is that to really leverage it and harness it for forward movement and elevation and the work that we do, it's about plucking the meaningful, the good nuggets and themes and threads. And I think that's the type of thing where that's where we rely on our experience and, you know, our expertise and what sets us apart as professional, being able to know what's worth pulling from it. Let's say you say, chat, give me 10 headlines.
You should know, you know, if one of them is the right one, or if maybe it's a combination of three of them, or none of them. And I think it's
SPEAKER_01
just it helps you along in the process. I totally agree. But it does streamline things.
So the thing is you want, and this different questions of where universities should go now with this, right? Like, what are we teaching? I told you before, I'm going to, when I go into class now, I open the chat gpd before saying anything, I asked you to write the digital marketing course for me, and you can create syllabus and the slides and the materials and the rubrics and the assignments. And, you know, if you take the transcript of the slide, you can put it in the video AI, like, come take it, forgot the name, nevermind. And it will create a video of the course.
So, and I tell the students, okay, so why do you need me? And here's the question. This is where you start your earning your pay in a world like this, you know, if I cannot do a lot better than this, if I cannot teach my students why knowledge is important, why asking the right questions is much more important than what kind of tool you're using. Because tools change all the time.
But first of all, humans don't change that fast. Human psychology does not change that fast. Consumer behavior does not change that fast.
And we need to work on those basic principles, but know how to adapt them, know how to modify our questions and modify what we're doing. We can work a lot faster, but we will work a lot smarter or else we won't have a job.
SPEAKER_04
I would love to hear from the three of you if there are any examples of successful higher ed executions and governance that you could point our listeners to.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so I mentioned it before in the past. So there's Ethan Mulligan, Wharton that shared, I think, three guides to professors and educators that want to, first of all, implement chagivity in other tools in class and how to deal with students and assignments in those cases. Bruce Clark from Northeastern also shared several very interesting examples.
And in my case, like I'm going back to Scantrons, you know, going back to the 70s. And I'm doing two quizzes now, pen and paper, that no students will not have those tools. And let's see what you're doing now, because as educators, we need to examine our students in the class.
So, and how they'll deal with real world situations. So sometimes you have to draw the conclusions from your own mind. And sometimes you'll have the entire set of tools used.
So in other assignments, they can use anything, as long as they provide resources and solutions. So I think as professors and educators, we need to combine all those things together, both recall, the unassisted recall and assignments that use all the plethora of tools, because we cannot say, Oh, this is inconvenient for us as professors to grade. So you cannot use it.
And remind me, our high school, our elementary teachers that said that, Oh, you will never have a calculator in your pocket at any time. But now we do. And now we have chatted at any time.
So this is this changes, I work for the last week, and more on just adapting my syllabus. And assignments that usually just take changing the dates. Yeah, it's changing so much.
SPEAKER_02
Rafi, how about you? What are some of the things that you're seeing as far as schools or examples
SPEAKER_03
in higher ed that are, you know, working this through? Yeah, so what I've observed so far is that there's still a big fat question mark around this, for the most part, because it's so new. I think a lot of institutions are still very much getting their footing on an official institutional positioning. With that said, I know that Google released a set of parameters and at least some framework for what folks might consider in developing a policy.
And, you know, they're looking at things like social responsibility, accountability, privacy, ethics. So I think all that to say, it remains to be seen. I see it being an opportunity for inclusive conversation campus wide.
Obviously, faculty are going to be, they're going to want to be at the heart of that. And rightfully so. I think it's an opportunity for conversation and for folks to learn about it and have some
SPEAKER_02
spirited dialogue around it. Yeah, and I know that from the execution standpoint, you guys both talked a little bit about governance and some of the other things, but from the execution standpoint, and again, that goes back to a lot of the people that are going to be on the, on the conference. I know Jamie Hunt, who's been on the podcast a couple of times, she is using it from a, you know, a leadership perspective, from an administrative perspective of just, you know, what are some help me with the job descriptions, help me with questions for my interviews, help me with some of the planning for my team and questions and things like that.
That again, it goes back to each seat on the team. How can you use it in different ways? And, you know, I did a great course of certification with Jules White from University of Vanderbilt. And he, he did a prompt engineering course that I took on Corsi and, and really learned a lot of things, learned more about the titles of some of the prompts that I was doing, but I think it also was one of those things that kind of gave me a deeper understanding to kind of see somebody who's doing it and understand that better.
And, and I think also just there's all kinds of people that are kind of exploring that. Brian Piper, a co-author of Epic Content Marketing, he's at University of Rochester. He was on the podcast and I know he's utilizing AI and a lot of that content development and drafts and social media.
And, and so he'll be on the conference as well. But I think that it's still, we're just starting to scratch the surface of how higher ed and higher ed markets are starting to plan this. I mean, keep in mind, it's really only been in the news cycle for six months to eight months.
And it's a lot's changed even in that time.
SPEAKER_01
So I think I mentioned it in the conference and I said it again and again because again, I told you some people are starting to avoid you because that's all I talk about. But I think universities are, especially when you come to market universities, and you know, people will ask, why do I need this? Why do I need to go to college today? And I think, I think that it's, it's so important to go to college today, especially for this holistic approach of education, especially for the fact that you get to learn the things that will create a baseline and better think or better prompter, if you will, for the future. And unless universities will find a way to discuss this, like someone else might steal it and like, you might see Google University or whatever or OpenAI University and like universities might be labeled your old and irrelevant, but we're more relevant than ever.
You know, English lit is more relevant than ever now. It's funny, like all those things are much more relevant than they used to because some stuff, like, you know, programming might not be as relevant as it used to because it can do this. But thinking, critical thinking, doing all those things is like, has never been one other thing that
SPEAKER_04
you mentioned at the conference was the notion of future proofing. And would like to know what you mean and what, what we should do or, you know, what we should look to three months down the road, six months down the road, please explain future proofing.
SPEAKER_03
So when I think about future proofing, I go back to Gil's notion of the value of an education. And yes, you could just take YouTube classes, but it's at the end of the day, there will never be a substitute for that experience eyeball to eyeball connection in the classroom. And I see an opportunity for higher education to step up to the plate in future proofing the next generation of the workforce and getting them comfortable, making sure that they understand the power and how these tools can be used to the benefit of whatever our respective professional pursuits are.
That's what I think of with future proofing. Bart, what's your take on future proofing? So I agree with you,
SPEAKER_02
I would even expand it out to just the civics. I mean, I remember when we were in high school, you had to take civics and, you know, and I think that, you know, years ago, I think the idea of education being to prepare a society was a lot more important. I think as of late, we've been more focused on career outcomes and financial outcomes and, and those types of things, which is, which is certainly important.
And that's a lot of what drives the market. But I think that part of what we're going to have to do is start to identify how it's going to impact our society, how it's going to impact us as living together in a culture, in a society. And those are deeper questions.
When that quote that you wrote at the beginning, Troy, that from Alvin Toffler, it comes from the book Future Shock. And I knew that it came from that, you know, he wrote, he was a futurist. And so he wrote about the future.
The book was written in 1970. And so I listened to it on audible last couple of weeks. And it just, I mean, some of the stuff that they talked about just made me cringe.
I mean, you know, the way we talk about, you know, DEI or, or, or different things today was very different than what they talked or even wrote in academic books in the 70s. And so once I got past all that, and he was talking about how he kept calling it a new industrial age. Well, we know that it's turned into a knowledge age, as opposed to what they thought back then was going to be another industrial age.
But I think a lot of what he talked about was just this idea of things are going to change. And how do we adapt? And how do we get ready for those types of changes? I mean, he had predicted that within 25 years by 1995, we would be living under the ocean, that there would be colonies of people living under the ocean. Well, certainly there are not cities under the ocean right now.
But it, so you have to kind of get past that. But it's the idea that a lot of what he was talking about was actually giving some thought and some pause to actually consider what the future looks like. I mean, to future proof, how you can, you know, stay up, stay abreast of AI, that's, I mean, you just have to be a part of it.
You have to be doing it every day. And that's the best way to stay a part of that. But I think as far as the bigger issues on how does that impact us as humans and, and, and a society, I think those are the things that we have to actually, you know, that's why we can let the tools do the things that we can then give more thought to those types of things as opposed to be just being driven.
So this was, I was so
SPEAKER_01
concerned when you mentioned Google is trying to lead the conversation on like the rules and regulations. Because those are people with a lot of interest and a lot of money into it. When we know that when money's involved, ethics go away.
And we mentioned that how long it took the surgeon general to share some insights on social media, like 20 years or 15 years it took them. And we would really need the government to, I don't want to say intervene, but like know what's going on. They, you know, know what the tools are, they know what they can do, and, and make sure that it's, so people mentioned often that it's the great equalizer, it's not the great equalizer.
It's going to be worse. It's going to be its exact opposite because people who have some affinity to those tools, usually those are people who are more affluent or who are healthy or more like belonging to the right and wrong classes. Those are the people that are going to use it more and get more opportunities.
And for them, $20 is not a lot to spend on monthly GPT access. And for other people, for them $20 is like, do I get to work or not today? And I really wish I would have had the opportunity to introduce these platforms to those people and to give more
SPEAKER_04
opportunities to teach everyone how to use them. As we bring the episode to a close, Gil and Rafi, I would like to ask you if there is a final thought or maybe a piece of advice that you would offer someone that maybe isn't utilizing the technology or adopting the technology as well as they could or should be something that they could do immediately to move the needle or to have a great effect on their future with Generative AI?
SPEAKER_01
So I would recommend, first of all, touch with me on LinkedIn, ask me questions. I talk a lot, that's all I do. And I really, I get a lot of people asking me questions on those things and I love to share, you know, within my limited time and I do post on LinkedIn on those things and Bart does and Rafi does like, follow those people that already disseminated the information for you and analyze what's important and what's not because 95% of what's out there is bullshit today.
So sending them on their own to try, it's probably not the best idea. Talk to someone who adopted it, they'll save you so much time and time is of the essence here. Because if you're going to wait the month or two, if we're going to release this in a month from now, if you're going to make the wait that month and not do anything and want to start learning from yourself or on your own and things continue to grow exponentially, you'll be left behind so far it won't matter.
So talk to people. And again, I think we're all as you said evangelists, I just say we're excited and happy about this. And we're happy to share, we're happy to talk about this, we're happy to share examples.
Like, I think those are the way when you can catch up instead of like trying to do it on your own.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, that's a good point. Thank you, Rafi.
SPEAKER_01
I completely agree. On your behalf as well, I volunteer to do this one.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, no, please, by all means, I would love to always enjoy this conversation. It's so exciting just how quickly it's changing and how it's impacting so many areas. It's not just our field.
And that's one of the things that I'm constantly shocked by just how many different areas of the market this ripple effect is is reaching. I think my biggest takeaway, Troy, is to experiment and get to know it and familiarize yourself with what it can do. And to ask questions, I think so much of, you know, success is asking the right questions.
And I think chat GPT AI in general gives us a really unique outlet to have a new type of dialogue. I'm really excited about what this means in terms of the future of our work. You know, for me, and I know everyone is in the same boat, time is of the essence, right? I've got a young family, growing a business.
So any tool, any edge that we can integrate into our workflow to improve what we're doing and prove the quality of our lives, I'm all about it.
SPEAKER_01
I worry about the next generation. I have kids in college now. I'm teaching kids in college.
How do I make sure they'll succeed in life? They'll get a job. They won't be replaced by
SPEAKER_04
someone with no AI. Thank you for those final thoughts. And yes, we're going to put each of your contact information within the show notes.
So Rafi and Gil, thank you so much for sharing your
SPEAKER_01
time and your wisdom. Thank you, Troy. Thank you, Bart.
Yeah, it was amazing meeting you again,
SPEAKER_04
Rafi. Thank you so much. Likewise.
Great to see you guys. Yes. Bart, what are your final thoughts?
SPEAKER_02
Just a couple of final thoughts just to echo exactly what Gil and Rafi said is experiment, play with it, get immersed in it, ask questions, don't do it alone, figure out where some people, you know, right now you have three people here that have said that they're willing to do it. Come to the conference. I mean, you know, come to the conference and hear what other people are doing, learn how to actually do it.
It's going to be very practical hands on. If anybody's going to be at the ABAG enrollment conference in the 1st of October, I'm going to be doing an after hours where back at the hotel, I'm going to just spend an hour, two hours just walking through how I'm using and just hands on training. And so there's a lot of opportunities there, a lot of chances for you to learn that.
And again, I think that, you know, if nothing else I would tell you just, you know, it's kind of like jumping into the pool in the middle of summer. It's going to feel cold if you tip your toe in, but if you can, and ball in, you'll be okay. And it'll warm up really quick.
So I would just encourage you to do that. And really again, thanks so much guys. It's been a
SPEAKER_04
blast talking with you today. Thank you, Bart. Also, thank you to our producer Rob Conlon at Westport Studios.
The higher ed marketer podcast is sponsored by Kailer Solutions, an education marketing and branding agency, and by Ring Digital, accurately and precisely connecting colleges directly to devices of their prospects, inquiries, alumni on their most valued physical mailing lists. On behalf of my co-host Bart Kailer, I'm Troy Singer. Thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_00
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