How AI will change your career
Digital theorist Ian Bogost (and guests) explore machine learning across industries
“It’s all moving so fast,” said Ian Bogost. “It’s moving so fast that by the time we ask the questions, there are different questions.”
Bogost, an internationally recognized scholar and theorist of digital culture, is the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Last spring, he led a weekly, one-credit course titled “How AI Will Change Your Career.”
The format was simple. Each week, the class — about 100 students representing all nine WashU schools — was joined by a prominent expert in a given field, from law and medicine to consulting, publishing, biosecurity and computer science.
“It was like a live podcast,” quipped Bogost, also a professor of film and media studies in Arts & Sciences and of computer science and engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering. “What are they seeing? How is AI affecting their profession?
“How is it affecting their own work?”
A different conversation
The idea for the class originated in discussions with the Arts & Sciences National Council. Will the jobs for which WashU students are training still exist in a year? In five years? “That’s the question we wanted to ask. And hopefully to answer.”
Though public debates around AI can be dominated by polarizing claims, of both utopian and apocalyptic varieties, Bogost wanted to foster a different conversation. “It wasn’t about resistance or acceptance,” he said. “The assumption we made was: This is happening. So what does it mean that it’s happening?
“Everyone had push-and-pull kinds of comments,” he added. “’This is what we know.’ ‘This is where there appears to be benefit.’ But no one said, ‘This isn’t affecting us at all.’”
Most guests joined virtually, though a few talks were staged live. With one notable exception (more on that below), conversations were not recorded, allowing guests to speak freely about sensitive matters.
Conversations often spanned multiple registers. A prominent trial attorney walked students through a major court case involving AI and copyright. But she also considered how AI tools and capabilities might impact law firms. What work can AI do? What could that mean for partners and associates? How might they do their jobs differently?
“At times, the AI framework allowed the class to uncover things that weren’t really about AI but that had been happening for a long time and now couldn’t be avoided,” Bogost said. For example, a session on clinical medicine included a substantial discussion of electronic health records.
“As a medical student, you’re trained to help people, to heal people,” Bogost said. “But you’re also going to be doing a lot of bureaucratic work. Can AI assist in that? When it does assist, does it make your job better, or does it just create more paperwork?”
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