NOCCCD Launches First Artificial Intelligence Expo
With Artificial Intelligence (AI) an increasingly hot top in education, NOCCCD is preparing to launch its first ever AI Expo in April 2025, sharing the potential and capabilities of this technology to students and educators alike.
NOCCCD AI Expo 2025: Empowering Minds will be held on Wednesday, April 16, 2025 at Cypress College. Guests of all ages are invited to stop by and connect with AI experts and faculty from all three campuses within the District. It will be an opportunity to learn how the fields of education and AI can work together for the betterment of students and their future careers. Yusuf Ahmad will be delivering the keynote speech Embracing AI in Education. Ahmad is the CEO of Playlab.ai, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to ensure AI is used responsibly in education spaces through a transparent, community-driven approach.
Though it seems that only in recent years AI took the world by storm, its roots begin earlier than one might think. The term "artificial intelligence" was first coined at the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project On Artificial Intelligence by the "founding fathers" of AI, all of whom were deeply involved in computer science: "Father of the Information Age" Claude Shannon; the inventor of garbage collection memory management, John McCarthy; Turing Award winner Marvin Minsk; and chief architect of the IBM 701, Nathaniel Rochester. They proposed the idea of producing human-like thinking in computers.
Since its beginnings at that midcentury summer workshop, AI now has exploded across industries thanks to the introduction of generative AI, or AI that dynamically produces text, images, and videos. A good example of this is OpenAI's ChatGPT. Preceding models have only ever had specific responses to specific input. Generative AI is a relatively young technology that still is largely unexplored, and its implementation raises many ethical, social, and environmental questions and challenges.
According to OpenAI's recent user data study, almost half of its young adult users call upon ChatGPT for assistance in the realm of academia, from drafting their essays to helping them on their job searches. A Harvard University study from last year showed that AI tutors have been used to improve student engagement and scores when trained on class material.
These practices and more will be discussed at the AI Expo. The District's event comes after successful AI events held at Cypress College, Fullerton College, and NOCE last year. The AI Expo is free and open to all. Lunch will be provided, so be sure to register for this exciting event.
For more information, contact:
Cypress College: Dr. Jeannie Mitsch (jmitsch@cypresscollege.edu)
Fullerton College: Professor Gary Graves (ggraves@fullcoll.edu)
NOCE: Professor Afraim Sedrak (asedrak@noce.edu)
