The rise of artificial intelligence at NSU

By Bryce Johnson and Kayla McGee •

Roxana Seoane, junior computer science major, saw artificial intelligence when she met Pepper, an AI robot, in the Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation.

“It interacts with you. And then you press on it, and it literally just is a robot. And it was exciting honestly,” Seoane said.

AI can range from robots and computers, to generative AI like deepfakes, chatbots or art generators.

Sumitra Mukherjee, professor in the College of Computing and Engineering, has seen AI grow significantly throughout recent years. He said people have already used AI for machine learning with the creation of the internet and self-driving cars.

“As far as I’m concerned, I see no difference between Google search and using a language model like ChatGPT or Bard [Google’s generative AI chatbot],” Mukherjee said. “And that’s one part I thought I wouldn’t see in my lifetime. I thought it’d take another 40, 50 years to reach the state.”

Mukherjee has worked with AI and machine learning since attending graduate school at Carnegie Mellon in 1988.

“My professor, the person I wanted to work with, he was developing a chess-playing machine. And that’s kind of considered art. How can you teach a machine to play chess, so that it can beat grandma? That’s an example of an application of AI,” Mukherjee said.

ChatGPT is also used for Julie, NSU’s virtual assistant available through SharkLink, for general questions. Students can ask Julie NSU specific questions about financial aid, registration, scholarships, GPA and more. With broader questions, Julie uses a more secure version of ChatGPT, Azure OpenAI, to generate a response.

James Drew, director of Innovation and Information Architecture, said Julie has roughly 14,000 conversations a month. She was designed to be outgoing, empathetic and formal, and she can track facial and voice patterns when the camera and microphone are on.

“When we did the 2.0 update for her, the look and feel, we actually went out onto campus and we talked to over a hundred different students about what they’d like to see,” Drew said. “We need people to use her and let us know how she could be better.”

John Wensveen, NSU chief innovation officer and executive director of the Levan Center, thinks it’s important to understand and grow with AI as it continues to be used to assist others.

“Artificial intelligence is really the collection of data that gets smarter as it’s trained to do so,” Wensveen said. “We decided that to become fully educated and aware of what AI really is, and what it will be in the future, we wanted to reach out to certain companies around the world so they can also educate us.”

The Levan Center is partnering with Dell Technologies to create the AI Digital Cities Lab.

“Dell is one of the world’s leaders in the creation of Emergent Technologies around artificial intelligence and Digital City Lab,” Wensveen said. “That means our lab is going to be a one-of-a-kind in this region of the country where you can walk into a highly secure environment, and you can master design an entire city from the ground up using artificial intelligence applications.”

With AI being in many different fields, Seoane has seen an increased interest in her field of study.

“I definitely do think AI is really interesting to people, and they want to know more. And it’s definitely engaging them to [become] tech students. Before, a lot of people weren’t computer science majors. And now it’s a more common thing,” Seoane said. “Obviously, there’s pros and cons to too much technology. But for the most part, I’d say it’s really helpful.”

Mukherjee recommends students take advantage and fully utilize AI but is also concerned about what it could mean for the future.

“If there’s any task that ChatGPT can do better than me, no one’s going to pay me to do that job. They’re going to get ChatGPT to do it at a much lower cost,” Mukherjee said.

Seoane agrees that utilizing AI is beneficial to students. But it can also take away skills they need going forward, setting them up for difficulties. Seoane is concerned that AI is not based on human interaction.

“People will get too comfortable with it that they won’t know how to do anything themselves. I think sometimes people take that for granted too much. They lose their whole life around it,” Seoane said.

The Levan Center of Innovation’s Volumetric Capture Studio was featured by national correspondent, Sam Brock, on The Today Show on Feb. 2.

Scan here to watch the segment.