As students look forward to commencement, a key part of the ceremony is graduates crossing the stage as their name is read. At schools much larger than Keene State, there are thousands of graduates and names often get mispronounced.
The University of New Hampshire (UNH) has adopted an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool to read the names of graduating seniors to combat human error with mispronunciation and overall make the ceremony run more smoothly.
This is the second year UNH will be using Tassel, a platform dedicated to making graduation more accessible and inclusive, according to WMUR.
We have seen the University System of New Hampshire schools follow one another when new policies are put into place. Often, KSC and Plymouth State University (PSU) take after UNH and it has made us wonder if an AI reader could be implemented here at KSC, too.
There are several factors that come into play when using AI in graduation that have us split on the overall idea.
A major concern as AI continues to be implemented in our society is the environmental impact. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, “Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people.”
UNH integrates sustainability into all they do and the institution even has a platinum rating under The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System or STARS.
The Equinox believes that using AI to read off names at graduation is hypocritical at best when schools put lots of effort and resources into sustainability. However, we also understand that for larger institutions such as UNH, using AI will save a significant amount of time without the need for extensive preparation.
Another concern we have is the personal aspect of having someone read your name aloud at graduation. At DI schools, it is likely that the person shaking your hand or reading your name at the ceremony is someone you do not know. With Interim President Don Birx attending PSU graduation and being an extremely new face to KSC, that personal aspect is already out the window. But having a robotic voice read your name is not exactly a better alternative.
A potential compromise could be department chairs reading the names of graduates in that major. This would create a more personable experience for students and the names being read would be spread out amongst those professors.
While some argue that an AI voice could eliminate students’ names being butchered, there is always room for technological error. There certainly is a level of practicality to adopting an AI system, though, especially as the AI would not be taking away anyone’s paid position.
Even though no one’s specific job is being replaced by AI in this situation, schools do have to pay for Tassel, and given the university system’s current financial standing, is this something really necessary to use our already limited resources on?
Graduating seniors have paid a large amount of money at their respective institutions; the least these schools could do is take the time to read their names as they walk the stage.
As UNH gets more comfortable with Tassel, we will see if it proves to be a worthy expense, but given that KSC has a smaller student body, there’s no need for AI to read any of our names at graduation.
