Innovation, Technology & Authentic Intelligence
Create a future where Hamilton students and faculty, through innovation, draw on the mix of technology and authentic intelligence to develop, test, and advance new ideas on campus and in the world beyond.
Create a future where Hamilton students and faculty, through innovation, draw on the mix of technology and authentic intelligence to develop, test, and advance new ideas both at Hamilton and in the world beyond.
Artificial intelligence, big data, predictive analytics, machine learning, and a host of other technologies are transforming virtually every field of study and enterprise. The speed at which large language models are becoming more sophisticated – completing tasks from taking the LSATs to ordering groceries, playing chess, creating short films – is dizzying. There are thousands of products now on the market that use AI as coaches and tutors for writing, math, science, screenwriting, and more. Soon you will be able to learn most languages by walking the streets of any city in an immersive headset interacting with an AI agent who appears as a waiter in a café, a child in a park, a merchant at a market, an Uber driver, or a shopkeeper. Students can have a debate with James Baldwin about race in America or interrogate Alexander Hamilton about his views on international trade. AI can provide powerful coaching around writing – helping students with basic issues of sentence construction, grammar, flow, and logic.
The Innovation Center puts Hamilton at the forefront of preparing students across all disciplines to innovate and lead in this technology-driven world,” said President David Wippman. “The center will provide students with technology-equipped classrooms, high-speed computing capabilities, makerspace, drone, robotics, and electronics labs, collaboration and display space, and a new home for Computer Science. Perhaps most important, by drawing students and faculty from across the College to work together on cutting-edge problems, it will foster the innovation that inspired the center’s name.”
What is the unique way a liberal arts college can engage with technology? How do we define and enable digital fluency? How can we build partnerships with other colleges and with industry, taking advantage of the Innovation Center, in order to show the distinctive ways a liberal arts college can not only keep up with technology but actually drive solutions to make technology more humane, more beautiful, more just, and more likely to expand, rather than diminish, human imagination and connection? What is the boldest version of the Innovation Center that could define a new liberal arts approach to technology and innovation?
How can we harness these advances and disruptions to free faculty for even more high-concept and high-touch teaching? How will colleges and universities incorporate AI in operations and learning? What new models of teaching might emerge? What skills do students need to engage with AI creatively, ethically, and artfully? And, what is the distinct role of a liberal arts college, both in the space of innovative pedagogy but also in terms of leadership? What can we do – the questions we ask, the way we interrogate and explore new technology, the way we center the human experience – that will help shape how society will engage with AI and emerging technology moving forward? Can Hamilton be a place that elevates authentic intelligence as a necessary mediator of artificial intelligence and, in so doing, better prepare students for a future that is not yet legible? Or can Hamilton become a useful enzyme that reshapes and redirects artificial intelligence toward critical human objectives and needs? What would it look like for Hamilton to not only navigate the new AI landscape responsibly, but to be a national leader in this space?
Technology is part of a larger innovation ecology centered on the art and science of advancing ideas. A hallmark of Hamilton is:
- a faculty on the frontiers of their disciplines and fields, surfacing new ideas, creating knowledge and ways of capturing and representing the full breadth of the human experience
- a gifted, self-directing, and curious student body that learns from and collaborates with faculty in their scholarship and creative endeavors
- a first-rate staff with deep technical knowledge and skills.
What if Hamilton organized its resources to better prepare students to advance ideas of public value? Whether it relates to business, education, or other social enterprises, how can we integrate entrepreneurship – that is, the process and skill of surfacing ideas, developing them into proposals, prototyping them, and exploring whether they are scalable and viable – into our liberal arts education? Can we develop an innovation environment that enables and empowers our community to extend our impact beyond Hamilton’s traditional boundaries?
