2024 Dr. Bruce J. Nelson ’74 Distinguished Speaker Series

The 2024 Nelson Series, Learning in the Age of AI, is an exploration of the complex relationship between human and machine learning. Industry experts will help us make sense of how people learn in the age of AI.

A reception for each event begins at 5:15 p.m. with the lectures commencing at 6 p.m. Talks are free and open to the public.

Sal Khan, September 10

“AI Won’t Destroy Education, It’ll Save It”

After the explosion of AI, teachers and parents around the world worried that it would completely undermine education as we know it. But Sal Khan says that doesn’t have to be the case. “We’re at the cusp of using AI for the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen,” he says. Khan uses his extensive experience and thorough research to break down how to use AI in education, from giving every student an amazing personal tutor and every teacher an intelligent teaching assistant, to exploring different methods of learning for students around the world.

Sal Khan is founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a nonprofit educational organization that offers free lessons in math, science and humanities, as well as tools for parents, teachers and districts to track student progress. Khan Academy is piloting an AI guide called Khanmigo that is a tutor and teaching assistant. He is also the founder of Khan Lab School, a nonprofit laboratory school in Mountain View, California, a cofounder of Schoolhouse.world, a nonprofit that offers free tutoring over Zoom, and cofounder of Khan World School, a new nonprofit online high school. Khan holds three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard. He has been profiled by 60 Minutes and was recognized as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Registration for in-person attendance has reached capacity but you may still register for virtual attendance.

John Warner, October 8

“Resist, Renew, Explore: Human Values in the Age of AI”

Now that we have easy access to technology that produces text with unmatched speed and fluency, we’re questioning the role writing plays in school, work and society. John Warner will explore the differences between “syntax generation” and writing as the experience of thinking, feeling and communicating, and how to empower students to engage with one of the most human things we do.

John Warner is a national voice on the teaching of writing, faculty labor and institutional values, both as a frequent speaker and a longtime contributor to Inside Higher Ed, where his “Just Visiting” column has run weekly for over 10 years. He is also the author of Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities, The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing, Sustainable. Resilient. Free.: The Future of Public Higher Education and the forthcoming book How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.

A former college instructor with 20 years of experience across multiple institutions (University of Illinois, Virginia Tech, Clemson, College of Charleston), Warner works as a writer, editor, speaker and consultant, and he is a faculty affiliate at the College of Charleston. In addition to his work in education, for over a decade he’s been a weekly columnist for the Chicago Tribune, writing about books and the habits of reading as his alter ego, “The Biblioracle.” In 2021, he started an associated Substack newsletter, The Biblioracle Recommends, which was a Substack Featured Publication for 2021.

Emily M. Bender, November 12

“Don’t Try to Get Answers from a Stochastic Parrot”

From major search engine companies providing “AI overviews” and chatbot interfaces to the promise of “AI tutors” to municipalities and organizations providing chatbots as interfaces to rules and regulations, it seems like large language model-driven chatbots are the future of information access. However, Bender will argue that this technology does not fit the task: not only is it unreliable, even if it were reliable it can’t support the sense-making that is integral to information literacy.

Emily M. Bender is a professor of linguistics at the University of Washington (Seattle), where she has been on the faculty since 2003. She is also adjunct faculty in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School at the University of Washington. In 2022 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in 2023 she was included in TIME’s inaugural list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence. She is president of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

Bender’s public scholarship is focused on helping broad audiences and policymakers understand the technology that is marketed as “artificial intelligence” and on cutting through the hype around AI. Because so much of the technology in question involves language processing, her perspective has been crucial in the ongoing conversation around this technology: as a linguist, she brings knowledge of how language works and an understanding of how people process and react to language. Thanks to Bender’s ability to articulate these key points in a way that is accessible and impactful for non-specialist audiences, she has become a go-to voice for the media, appearing in the media on average over twice a week over the past year. She also brings her message directly to the public through her podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, co-hosted with sociologist Dr. Alex Hanna.