Before launching a club to help students work with AI, Tyler Moore ’29 and Dylan Gordon ’28 needed to learn to work together. Both had the same idea at the same time: starting a Bryant AI Club this fall. Rather than becoming rivals, they quickly agreed to join forces.
With Bryant Provost and Chief Academic Officer Rupendra Paliwal, Ph.D., serving as advisor, the AI Club recently held its first meeting, bringing in Ronald Washburn, J.D., senior lecturer of Legal Studies, to talk about AI ethics and the use of the technology in the classroom. Afterward, the two club founders sat down for a conversation with Bryant News:
What made you want to start an AI Club at Bryant, and what do you hope to accomplish?
Dylan Gordon: My interest stemmed from the AI buildathon sponsored by Bryant, Bentley, and Babson in April. I’ve also been taking classes to learn more about utilizing AI and though the club would be a good opportunity to share that knowledge with other students, bring in people from outside companies to talk about AI, run workshops and utilize the new Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence, and compete in more hackathons.
Tyler Moore: Last spring, I competed in the AI hackathon organized by Bryant and Claude Arnell Milhouse, co-founder and CEO of Yconic, and my team won. I also have a business making mobile apps and websites, so I wanted to get more Bryant students into hackathons and try to raise the knowledge base here about AI, including how to use it to make your life more productive and benefit more from it.
Is the club just for students with prior AI experience, or can students with a more casual interest in learning about AI, but maybe don’t want to compete in a hackathon, for instance, join as well?
Gordon: Yes, the goal of the club is to increase students' knowledge of AI across all fields of study. Our lectures and workshops are open to anyone, and students can also come to meetings and get help with their own projects.
"The goal of the club is to increase students' knowledge of AI across all fields of study."
How do you use AI for work, school, or in your personal life?
Gordon: Over the summer, I did language model training through Handshake AI. From there, I started creating automations for small- and medium-sized businesses. For example, I worked with a family in Duxbury, Massachusetts, on their Airbnb and real estate portfolio to automate their advertising, maintenance, and bookings.
Moore: I use it on the development side for coding, and I worked with an investment bank creating a CRM platform to help them gain customers. AI also helps me study. It's really good at quizzing you and finding information.
What kind of presenters and workshops are you planning to host through the club?
Gordon: We want to bring in speakers to talk about how they're implementing AI in their own companies and organizations, to make sure students are staying on top of innovations taking place in the workplace. The workshops will help with personal projects, like creating a website or app.
How does the club align with Bryant’s broader focus on AI education and implementation?
Moore: Bryant puts a big emphasis on getting real-world experience, and I think that's what this club is aimed at — providing students with experience using AI like they will after they graduate. This isn’t going to be a club about taking your homework and throwing in ChatGPT and hoping you get the right responses, but rather about how can you can structure AI prompts and add your own value, knowledge, and creativity to get the most out of AI.
"Bryant puts a big emphasis on getting real-world experience, and I think that's what this club is aimed at — giving students experience using AI like they would use it after they graduate."
You both independently had the idea of starting an AI Club. How did you come together?
Gordon: I found out about what Tyler was doing when I was watching his presentation at an entrepreneurship pitch competition, and he listed founding an AI Club as one of his goals. At first, I was like, ‘whoa, this isn’t good.’ But I’m happy it happened because the stronger your board is, the better you're going to be able to produce. It was very easy to talk to Dylan and figure out how we can make this happen together, and I think we’re going to make something better than we would have been able to do on our own.
Moore: We combined both of our boards, and although we don't have a ton of members right now, I think it will grow and this will be a very strong club because of it.
What are you looking forward to doing with the club this year?
Moore: I’m looking forward to learning from the keynote speakers that we're going to bring in from different fields. Starting a club like this allows us to create a new community of people who are like-minded and share our goals. Hopefully, I'll be able to meet other people I might end up working with eventually.
Gordon: A lot of students are worried about what AI is going to do to the job market and where they're going to fit in. Our big goal is to give students experience and help them learn about using AI and not get replaced by it. I think that’s a big question that we'll try to answer.
The AI Club meets weekly on Wednesdays at 3 p.m. in the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence at the BELC.