2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI) enabled technologies is widely documented and increasingly evident in everyday life. Yet what legal or policy response this technological growth will precipitate is less certain. Nevertheless, the development and enactment of regulatory frameworks for AI will necessitate AI engineers with a command not only of the technical intricacies of AI models, but also of the policy and regulatory landscape for AI development and compliance. This is made clear by the 2023 US Executive Order on “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence,” which calls for an “AI talent surge” as well as the training of the federal workforce on “AI issues…as well as relevant policy, managerial, procurement, regulatory, ethical, governance, and legal fields,”

Our previous research has found that although students studying AI are interested in career paths related to AI policy, only a third of students surveyed thought their computer science (CS) courses adequately prepared them for these career options. Not only may CS students be themselves interested in policy-related careers, but the lack of instruction on how to apply (operationalize) ethical principles and regulatory requirements to the design and deployment of AI technologies represents, in our opinion, a ‘missing middle’ between technical computer science and policy-focused (e.g. public policy) curricula. Thus, the integration into the CS curriculum of practical content related to compliance of AI systems with AI regulations is useful to the latter segment of students, while more open-ended discussions about AI ethics and policy may inspire CS students to explore policy-related roles as a potential career path.

For this paper, we propose to evaluate a two-lecture ‘curricular module’ on AI policy that we plan to develop and pilot in a graduate-level introductory machine learning course (i.e. “ML 1”) at a large public university in the United States during the Fall 2024 semester. The first author of this paper will design and deliver this module, incorporating lecture-style presentation, class discussion, and other active learning opportunities into the two class periods. Students will complete pre- and post-module surveys to gauge student interest in AI policy and measure competencies related to the application of policy to technical AI development before and after the two lectures.

The goals of this research are twofold. First, this pilot may provide other instructors with inspiration for content or activities to include in similar ‘modules’ in their own courses. The purpose of this pilot module, then, is to demonstrate that discussions around AI ethics and policy can easily and effectively be incorporated into existing technical courses. Second, the pre- and post-surveys will help to further evaluate student interest in AI policy, and to identify competencies that may be relevant to AI practitioners tasked with ensuring compliance with AI regulation and ‘responsible AI’ (RAI) principles, which are often abstract and sometimes contradictory. The latter is especially useful to policymakers and educational administrators who must adapt university curricula to prepare students for the AI workforce, which will increasingly involve ethical, social, and regulatory dimensions in addition to technical ones.