Artificial Intelligence continues to be a hot topic – in the wider world and right here within the Trinity community.
Conversations around AI circle academic integrity, future careers, the place of human capability, and technological ethics. Amongst it all is an ever-present sense of uncertainty as well as fear, excitement, and possibility. Hitting so many sensitive points for us all, it’s clear why this conversation isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Indeed, Trinity’s recent seminar breakfast event focusing on AI reached capacity within just a few days of being open to the Trinity community. Hosted by Trinity’s Career and Student Pathways team in collaboration with The Hurlstone Centre, the event was held in light of Trinity’s new AI Guidelines for Teaching, Learning, and Working Well in an AI World. As students consider both subject selections and future careers, the event came at a critical time for students, parents, and staff alike.
Beginning the event, Mrs Deborah Williams (Deputy Headmaster – Academic) said:
“We have a particular desire to understand what the presence of this technology means for our boys. Not just through the lenses of academic integrity and learning but in relation to their wellbeing and their future.”
To share more and dig into the world of AI, Trinity welcomed Professor Karen Whelan, Associate Dean, Teaching and Learning, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at UTS. 
Throughout her seminar, she impressed the importance of humans remaining ‘in the loop’, dispelling some of the fear that circulates around AI.
Humans will always be needed, she says, “to make sense of the output … to exercise judgement, to ask the right questions, to understand the meaning of what’s coming out of artificial intelligence systems”.
When it comes to the prevalent fear that automation will take over jobs, Professor Whelan says that it’s not quite as simple as that. While AI has the potential to take on a lot, it will never be able to take over the entirety of any job and in the gap that AI can’t bridge, that’s where humans will thrive and create new roles to reflect a new reality.
“Most jobs are an entanglement of different tasks,” she says. “Artificial intelligence won’t replace those who truly understand it. There are opportunities to shape the future of how artificial intelligence is used, by understanding that technical component, but also bringing to bear those other capabilities about social systems, psychology, and law. New role titles are emerging all the time.”
“The capabilities needed for the future in careers in artificial intelligence and in cybersecurity are about critical thinking. They’re about ethical reasoning. Understanding people and cultures and communities.
“Being able to communicate across disciplines is very important.”
For the students in the room, Professor Whelan stressed the need to think critically and stay curious as they use artificial intelligence.
“It’s important you make use of artificial intelligence … but don’t do it passively. Be the author of your own thinking. Make sure you’re always stopping, critically reflecting, and understanding yourself. Use the tools thoughtfully.”
This last point is particularly relevant as Trinity shares and implements its new ‘AI Guidelines for Teaching, Learning and Working at Trinity’.
The guidelines are designed to evolve as technology changes but they are built on the core understanding that: “Trinity values teaching and learning as a human, relational, and student-centred experience in which students develop their own academic voice, creativity, and critical perspectives”.
In an InSite post sharing this first iteration of the Guidelines, Mrs Deborah Williams shared that the School recognises its responsibility to prepare students for future work which means understanding AI tools and knowing how to use them to support productivity, but that this must happen with the supervision of people who already have the expertise, judgement, and maturity to evaluate and improve its output.
In the School context, Mrs Williams also shared that using AI tools needs to be a considered task.
“Generative AI can do more than assist a learner. It can shape the task itself by selecting, organising, and producing content in ways that reduce the student’s own agency. Unlike a teacher, it has no accountability, relational understanding, or genuine concern for how a student learns.
“For that reason, Trinity encourages purposeful rather than expedient use of AI. Students should engage with AI by questioning, constraining, refining and critiquing its responses, not by passively accepting output.”
When it comes to academic integrity and assessments, the Guidelines are clear: students are not permitted to submit work produced by AI.
“Work presented as a student’s own must reflect that student’s own effort, thinking, ideas, skills, and language,” said Mrs Williams. “Students deserve assessment that genuinely tests their understanding and provides meaningful feedback.” 
For more information on the ‘AI Guidelines for Teaching, Learning and Working at Trinity’, please access InSite where you can also catch up on the presentation.
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