AI Expert Speaks To Benjamin Faculty, Staff 

Professor Andy Van Schaack, an expert in Artificial Intelligence, whose career spans twenty years in Silicon Valley, spent March 15 with The Benjamin School community discussing the potential and pitfalls of emerging technologies. 

A professor at Vanderbilt University, Schaack’s research focuses on emerging technologies, like AI, that have the ability to make “teaching and learning more effective, efficient, and accessible.”

Schaack told a roundtable of Benjamin faculty and staff that Artificial Intelligence has been the most significant development in his career and in civilization. The question, according to Schaack, then becomes how we can use AI productively. 

Schaack has traveled to independent schools across the country, meeting with teachers and administrators, about what AI is, where it’s going, and how schools need to think about their work to prepare young people for the future. 

Schaack said he is of the mind that we shouldn’t handcuff students from using these tools to be more productive. 

As the founder of several technology companies, Shaack said he asks two things of prospective hires: how are you using AI to help you do your work better, and what can you do that Chat GPT can’t?

   

“Think of it as task replacement versus job replacement - it can free us up to do things we enjoy doing. As a school, you continue to instill and develop values - AI isn’t going to replace that. Rather, how can it help you focus on those things? It allows you to do more of the type of thinking that leads to creativity,” said Schaack.