The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 created much excitement in diverse fields. This development also challenges our long-held assumptions about assessment, academic integrity, and the very purpose of schooling. Some folks claim that a revolution is happening, and perhaps teachers might no longer be relevant, yet more recent reports claim that ChatGPT might be causing harm to our students.

We believe that as AI becomes more powerful, human skills will become more important and that AI can assist in competency-based learning of said skills. In this talk, we will describe how at the National University of Singapore, we have developed and deployed LLM-powered role playing chatbots in diverse disciplines such as social work, law, and nursing to train human skills. We will also share some learning points from our experiences and our views about the longer term impact of AI on higher education in Singapore.

Speaker Biography

Ben Leong

Dr Ben Leong is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore. Dr Leong received his SB, MEng, and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), United States. He has been recognised for his excellent teaching with a number of teaching awards, including the NUS Outstanding Educator Award in 2015. Dr Leong also served as the Chair of the university’s Computer Science Department Standing Teaching Committee from 2017 to 2020. His research interests are in the areas of Computer Networking and Distributed Systems. More recently, he has been working on applying AI for education.

From July 2014 to June 2019, Dr Leong served as the Director of the Experimental Systems and Technology Laboratory at the Ministry of Education (MOE). In this role, he set up and managed an in-house software development team that successfully delivered a number of applications for MOE. In addition, Dr Leong served as a consultant to the Student Learning Space (SLS) team that built a new learning management system for MOE schools.

From January 2021 to December 2023, Dr Leong set up and served as Director of the Centre for Computing for Social Good & Philanthropy (CCSGP) at School of Computing (SoC). Since 2020, Dr Leong has served as Chief Data Officer of AI.SG, the national AI Programme, and concurrently as Director of the AI Centre for Educational Technologies (AICET), where his team applies AI to build software platforms for education.

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Ben Leong is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule

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