Lui Hokoana is the University of Hawaii Maui College Chancellor.

AI. Artificial Intelligence. The words alone excite many and strike fear into the hearts of others. Like it or not, AI is here to stay. Fear not, because used properly, AI has the potential to change education for the good in big ways.

It’s important to understand the history. AI and related technologies have been around since the 1960s. Early efforts focused on robotics, specifically on trying to make robots act like humans. Twenty years in, interest and innovation experienced a significant decline ’til the late 1990s and early 2000s when AI started beating humans at their own games — from chess and “Jeopardy!,” to the difficult Chinese game of Go. Eventually machine learning led to voice assistants like Alexa and advanced image-recognition systems in our cars, some of which actually do the driving.

The development of ChatGPT and similar models began to take hold at the beginning of this decade. The goal of these models was, simply put, to learn absolutely everything. And by 2023, they could answer just about any question in a human-friendly format. “That’s why it’s so popular,” explains Dr. Debasis Bhattacharya, our Applied Business and Information Technology (ABIT) Program Coordinator and resident AI “expert.”

“It’s like talking to a child or a friend or an uncle who supposedly knows everything” he continues, “and that’s why it was so disruptive, especially in education.”

Bhattacharya is a member of UH’s new AI Curriculum and Pedagogy Task Force, a short-term high-impact advisory group focused on developing and recommending a framework for curriculum transformation across the university. “The impact of AI ripples through the entire UH system,” says Bhattacharya. “UH President (Wendy) Hensel is committed to AI being widely used and managed responsibly, and we at UHMC are very much a part of the system’s efforts.”

President Hensel is, indeed, an enthusiastic advocate. “This is about preparing every learner, in every discipline, to thrive in an AI-driven world,” Hensel said in an August 2025 UH News story. “Higher education is uniquely positioned to lead through this change, not only by teaching new skills, but by grounding innovation in ethics, cultural values and a commitment to equity.”

We would be remiss if we didn’t address the significant challenges presented by AI. “Education is about teaching people how to use their brains. Humans have to make an effort to learn. As AI’s recall continues to improve, it’s trained to respond to please you, rather than to correct you or guide you,” Dr. Bhattacharya explains. We have to use this tool to complement our basic human function and not to automatically rely on it to separate fact from fiction.

And then there is the matter of ethics. AI inherently risks telling you things you should not know or don’t need to know. AI doesn’t know right from wrong or anything about human values and empathy. Privacy is also a challenge. In addition to continuing to learn everything there is to know, AI is learning about you every time you interact with it. Currently, there are no restrictions on it telling everyone anything it knows, including what it knows about you. The bottom line is we are still figuring it out and it is our responsibility to our students, our faculty, our staff, and our community to use AI for our benefit.

Here’s some good news. In education, the AI ideal is personalized learning, recognizing that every student learns in their own way. AI agents — the newest evolution in AI — allow for exactly that. They are autonomous systems capable of managing complex workflows and making autonomous decisions with a human in the loop.

And this excites Bhattacharya. “This expands the educator’s ability to teach on a one-on-one basis. I can create an AI agent for each student in my classroom that extends my instruction individually. Educators can truly have an impact on every student in an individual way and students benefit from a tool that promotes individualized and personalized learning.” It’s a huge benefit. And it’s coming our way.

For up-to-date information on AI and the University of Hawai’i, please visit https://www.hawaii.edu/its/ai/index.html For complete information about UH Maui College, please visit https://maui.hawaii.edu/.

Dr. Lui K. Hokoana is Chancellor of the University of Hawaiʻi Maui College. Ka’ana Mana’o, which means “sharing thoughts,” is scheduled to appear on the fourth Thursday of each month. It is prepared with assistance from UH-Maui College staff and is intended to provide the community of Maui County with information about opportunities available through the college at its Kahului campus and its education centers.