{"id":2104,"date":"2025-05-15T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T13:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/?p=2104"},"modified":"2025-05-14T23:02:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T04:02:58","slug":"danny-alexander-on-the-jccc-honors-ai-seminar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/2025\/05\/15\/danny-alexander-on-the-jccc-honors-ai-seminar\/","title":{"rendered":"JCCC’s Danny Alexander Teaches A Seminar On AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Photo by: Baptiste Raffin)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Since last fall, English professor Danny Alexander has been teaching a seminar on AI and the future of work, for the JCCC Honors program. The seminar is focused on the students researching AI, and the work they hope to be doing beyond college.<\/span><\/p>\n

We met with Alexander to learn more about the seminar, and get some of his thoughts on AI.<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea for this seminar came from Alexander\u2019s own background in music.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy writing jobs have very often been music journalism,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cAnd for years and going back decades, there’s been concern. In fact there was huge concern back in the 80\u2019s about there being too good quality tape, that the record companies used to fight tape being brought in the United States. So just saying from that vantage point, this fear of what technology might do to the jobs and the income was something we were really sensitive to in the music writing. And watching the music industry all these years, how are they going to react to it? And then of course, you know, in the past couple of years, especially last year, I think that the idea that AI could take musicians\u2019 voices and just make records without them [is interesting]. So it kind of grew naturally out of that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But it was also inspired by his teaching career.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe familiarity of how much digital technology was going to change everything probably since I started teaching, and it comes up as an issue periodically. But I thought \u2018well this would be great for this research class\u2019 because this is something that everybody’s careers can be impacted by,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cWe don’t talk enough about it, you know, and it might help arm students, in essence for what might be down the pipe in their careers\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The seminar is not really lecture-based. Alexander encourages students to participate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI really kind of try to let the students lead a lot,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cSo they pick research topics within their fields of interest. It could be anything, you know, if they’re into anim\u00e9 or whatever it is they’re into, like music. My hope is that they all kind of go off and do their own research, in what they’re interested in, and then we bring it back to the class, and everybody’s learning from each other’s research. So it’s kind of even though everyone has their individual job, it’s a collaborative project to expand what we all know about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Alexander told us how it is important to understand how to deal with AI.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very clear that we just need to talk about it. It’s just part of the new reality and, to what extent it’s going to be useful in all our fields, and to what extent it can be a problem,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cI had some really good stories from students working and one working in an ER, talking about when AI was telling him that somebody was having a heart attack, and the cardiologist came by and said \u2018No, it doesn’t know what it’s talking about,\u2019 because he could see contextual reasons why that wasn’t always happening. And so, you know, if you don’t have a person there to check it, you’ll start treating the wrong thing. That can be a life or death thing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The complexities of AI is one of the many reasons why he thinks that it makes for the perfect Honors seminar.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s amazing the things [AI] can do,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cThat’s part of what I think makes it a really good topic for higher level scholarship and study, because it’s not an easy thing. It\u2019s going to be everywhere doing everything, and its potential is sort of limitless. So the question is, where do people fit usually? And that’s part of what, you know, I’m hoping that having discussions about it, it’s going to be helpful to people in terms of thinking about how to make a space for themselves.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alexander will teach the seminar again next Fall and Spring, and it is open to JCCC Honors students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since last Fall, English professor Danny Alexander has been teaching a seminar on AI and the future of work, for the JCCC Honors program. The seminar is focused on the students researching AI, and the work they hope to be doing beyond college.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":2136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[298],"ppma_author":[158],"class_list":["post-2104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-danny-alexander"],"author_meta":{"display_name":"Saul Epstein","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/author\/sepstein\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/files\/2025\/05\/Danny-Alexander-2.jpg","coauthors":[{"link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/author\/baptiste-raffin\/","display_name":"Baptiste Raffin"}],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["News<\/a>"],"unlinked":["News<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["Danny Alexander<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Danny Alexander<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 1 year ago","modified":"Updated 1 year ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on May 15, 2025","modified":"Updated on May 14, 2025"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on May 15, 2025 8:00 am","modified":"Updated on May 14, 2025 11:02 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":158,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"baptiste-raffin","display_name":"Baptiste Raffin","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","first_name":"Baptiste","last_name":"Raffin","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/files\/2025\/05\/Danny-Alexander-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2104"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2140,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104\/revisions\/2140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2104"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}