A recent report ranks the Peach State on the short list of states leading the way for people looking for a career in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Augusta is ready.
Agility Writer (www.agilitywriter.ai) is a web-based company that specializes in helping clients produce long-form articles through the use of AI. Adam Yong, Founder and CEO of the company, and a longtime Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultant, recently examined the volume of monthly online searches.
The outcome found California, home of Silicon Valley and headquarters for internet heavyweights, including Google and Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, topped the list of most desired career destinations.
There is a three-way tie for fifth place, with Georgia sharing the spot with Virginia and Illinois.
ABD interviewed Dr. Candis Bond, Director of the Writing Center and Assistant Professor of English at Augusta University about how Augusta is positioned to train the AI workforce. Bond recently led a forum on AI for the leadership team at the university.
Bond believes the reason AI is currently so popular is because it made a big leap from possibility to actuality in a relatively short time frame. She said people have used programs like Grammarly, which is a form of AI, for many years. But those generally offer AI to assist a person with something they have created.
Now, AI is becoming the creator.
“I don’t think people realize how possible it was for it to be doing the kinds of things that we’ve seen it do just within the last year or two. So, I think anytime something kind of blows up and there’s just a big leap, people become interested,” she said.
The challenge then becomes educating a workforce for the newly accelerated growth of AI.
“The AI revolution is fast reshaping industries and businesses across the board, creating a huge demand for skilled professionals who can effectively harness the power of this technology,” Yong wrote in the report he published on his findings. “States that focus on AI education and encourage a supportive ecosystem for innovation are positioned well enough to attract top-notch talent and fuel economic growth.”
Bond said Augusta University can offer a variety of educational opportunities, starting with the Center for Instructional Innovation.
“It has a great resource page on AI, which is externally facing, so anybody can access their web page, and they update it pretty often with tutorials, readings, and examples,” she said.
Another resource is her program, the Center for Writing Excellence.
“We also have resources on our writing across the curriculum tab of our website,” she explained. “Ours is a little bit more classroom-oriented, in the sense that its resources are related to statements that have been put out by governing organizations for higher education to let people know just what are best practices. We also have an AI interest group at Augusta University that faculty, students, and staff can join, and it has different kinds of subgroups within it. One focused on teaching, one focused on using AI in day-to-day life. One focused on using it in research.”
Bond said there are also community-based opportunities for anyone, from young students to adults, to explore AI and determine if a career in the field could be right for them. She said the Cyber Innovation and Technology Center recently joined with Booz Allen Hamilton to offer a panel discussion on AI. A recent session of the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce’s Business Institute focused on AI.
But Bond also urges anyone interested to just jump in on their own, using resources that exist online.
“What I think is the best way to learn is to try it yourself, because you can go to a lot of trainings and you can listen to a lot of other people talk about how they use AI, but until you sit down and try out one of the apps yourself, it’s hard to really get a sense of how it works,” she said. “I think it can be scary for people to try something new, but maybe try it on your own, when nobody else is around, and just have some fun with it. ChatGPT is a great one to start with. You can create a free account and just go in and give it some prompts and see what happens.”
