Navigating the AI Landscape

By Sarah Humm, Communications Coordinator

Many University School alumni have expertly scaled challenging technological terrain. 

James Park ’94 cofounded Fitbit, kicking off the 10,000 steps goal that we all know and (most days) love. Carl Sjogreen ’96 cofounded Seesaw, the learning experience platform used by millions of elementary school educators, students, and families. Jerry Yue ’10 founded Brain Technologies and is developing the first app-less smartphone, one that uses a generative AI interface as its operating system. 

Now that the new language of computing is human language, everyone (not just programmers) can harness the power of computers for whatever their endeavor. Find inspiration in the stories of these alumni who are navigating this new world and responsibly moving forward with excitement and curiosity—and helping others do the same. 

When Brian Hochman ’99, author, professor, and Director of the American Studies Program at Georgetown University, needed advice on how to approach the existence of ChatGPT with his students, he knew just the person to call: his best friend since sixth grade, Tony Jones ’99. 

Tony is an award-winning creative director who has built a career in advertising with a digital focus. In 2023, he co-founded Creative AI Academy, a company that delivers courses and workshops to teach people how to work with the newest member of their team, generative AI. 

Tony also teaches Designing with AI at the Pratt Institute, a course that requires the use of generative AI while considering how to use it responsibly in a creative field. This aligns with the challenge Brian and his colleagues were facing last summer. "I think the initial moral panic surrounding this in education was understandable—'it will make plagiarism easier, it will take all of our jobs'…" Brian said. "But Tony helped me understand what it was and what it wasn't and we worked together to create guidelines for how my students can employ AI in specific contexts." 

As an example, Tony explains that ChatGPT, with the right prompts, can advance a conversation, present an argument, or otherwise riff with a student as part of the critical reading process. Brian has adopted what he calls a "good-faith use" AI policy for his courses as he navigates this year of experimentation. He believes a student who values their education and professional aspirations will take responsible ownership of them. He acknowledges it is too early to tell if this policy is effective or even helpful for students who are working with a myriad set of generative AI guidelines across their courses. In this, his friend Tony can be helpful once again. Creative AI Academy has partnered with Georgetown University to develop and conduct long-term research around the evolution of teaching and learning with AI. 

Creative AI Academy also counts Dell and Salesforce as clients, and they offer a growing number of training programs. Tony explains, "In our tailored, hands-on approach, we work with clients to segment their existing workflow, identify relevant AI tools, and teach how to use those tools to improve every step, no matter the task." Though Tony shared in the initial hand-wringing that generative AI was going to take all our jobs, he quickly untangled his hands, got to work, and now believes, "AI will not replace our jobs, but people who use AI will replace those who don't."

Tony's beliefs are echoed by Brian, whose work is devoted to the history of new media technologies, "It's important to remember in this nascent phase that the most utopian or dystopian predictions won't come true. History tells that story over and over. I think we all need to approach this new moment from a position of humility." 

Brian and Tony are thrilled their career paths have converged with AI, and also grateful for the place where they forged their friendship. Tony says, "Being a critical thinker and able to articulate a point of view—on any topic—was foundational learning I got from US that applies to this day. Technology was also key. We had a computer lab and a flight simulator, so I saw how technology can augment learning from a young age." Brian said US was the most important thing his parents did for him, "The relationships I built there, the friends I have, were so meaningful for and informative in my growth. They still are." 

Dylan Siegler ’19 has had internships at two places that are likely the stuff of dreams for many students on the Shaker Campus: John Deere and Roblox. Though he didn't get to test drive tractors or play games in Roblox all day, he still thinks his jobs were pretty cool. Dylan graduated from Georgia Tech with a computer science degree and is now a full-time data scientist at Roblox. He started on this path at the Middle School, where he was a Junior Fellow. "I made a drawing application that I coded myself. It took a long time but I got it done," he said. Dylan went on to take all the computer science courses at the Upper School with teacher Peter Sweeney, including the first AI class, which was offered his senior year. 

At Roblox, Dylan's group is tasked with measuring what current Roblox visitors—over 60 million daily—are doing, identifying "pain points" in their activity, and prioritizing updates. Features are created to address these issues, and then Dylan's team tests and measures the changes in players' behavior to understand if the update has been successful. AI helps in the analysis of this massive amount of data. His team has also built a series of machine learning models to predict user's behavior, identify "bad actors," and detect fraud and account theft instantly.   

Dylan has a positive outlook for generative AI's uses in education and beyond. "ChatGPT's competency and general polish in all aspects is surprising. It's not perfect, but as with all these things, now that it has been shown to work, it is off to the races." Roblox is in that race, and is developing some exciting in-game applications using generative AI tools for the not-to-distant future. 

Spurred by his curiosity and love of math, Jeff Leane ’81 built a career at the intersection of new technology and business. In 1995, he was working at Accenture and co-invented one of the first internet bots. Jeff explains, "BargainFinder was a 'shopbot' that sent a flock of software robots scurrying around looking for bargains on books and music. It was an "agent" approach: a bunch of little systems, each possessing a little intelligence, that interact to do something cool. Our public experiment caught fire and launched the online comparison-shopping industry." Jeff said his and his colleagues' impatience with the then-state of AI fueled their invention and invoked the words of pioneering computer scientist Alan Kay, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." 

Jeff now focuses on empowering kids with this mindset. In 2012, he co-founded a non-profit that teaches computer science to students and their parents. These courses and events reach far beyond the Mill Valley, California, school district where they began and are now used around the country through the program CS is Elementary. Today, Jeff leads a charge to teach kids to build AI and machine learning systems, "from the math up." He believes any high school student with strong math skills can grasp the fundamentals of AI/ML and build a system to experiment with. Jeff says, "This approach is working, and creates a positive feedback loop: when kids found they could use math to build cool things, they were motivated to ask deeper questions about math, computing, everything." 

Jeff recalled another pivotal moment in education: spell-check. "Overnight, a correctly-spelled paper went from nice to commodity, raising the bar. Generative AI will raise the bar higher." Programs like ChatGPT can produce competent work, so students should be prepared to do better. How? Jeff says, "By making themselves better humans. Learn about everything: Statistics and geometry. Language and literature. Speaking and listening. Solo work, teamwork, and when to go against the group. How to lead and how to follow. The fullness of your humanity will set you apart."