Our Lab Featured in a Recent Interview about How AI is Shaping Critical Thinking at CU Anschutz

Our lab is featured in a recent campus interview, highlighting the exciting ways we are integrating artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance critical thinking in student education at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

It’s an honor to see our work and contributions to AI-driven learning being recognized. In the interview, Dr. Gao illustrated how AI technologies are not only transforming tasks but also helping students develop deeper analytical and problem-solving skills. The feature also spotlighted Nourah Salem, a fourth-year PhD student in our lab, and her groundbreaking research.

Dr. Gao’s work at CU Anschutz emphasizes innovation and creativity, exploring new ways to leverage AI in a responsible and impactful manner. AI in education is not just about automating routine tasks—it’s about freeing students to focus on the most complex and creative aspects of their work, ultimately fostering a higher level of critical thinking.

In the LARK Lab, Dr. Gao works closely with students to ensure they implement novel AI technologies in ways that promote thoughtful questioning, critical analysis, and problem-solving. AI becomes a tool to support and enhance learning, rather than a shortcut to bypass deeper understanding.

One example is Nourah Salem’s research, which uses large language models like ChatGPT to identify knowledge gaps in scientific literature—what is often referred to as “ignorance.” Salem’s study involves extracting these gaps from scientific papers and reaching out to the authors to validate whether they indeed represent true gaps in current knowledge. Impressively, over 80% of the identified gaps were confirmed by the authors. This project showcases how AI can augment research while emphasizing the importance of human validation and judgment.

In the article, Dr. Gao also shared her vision for establishing an AI Club at CU Anschutz. The goal is to help students improve their skills in prompt engineering and enhance their adaptability to learn and grow with the ever-evolving landscape of new technologies. Through this initiative, we hope to prepare students not just for the present but for the future of AI-driven innovation.

Through this work, Dr. Gao and the LARK Lab aim to empower students with the critical thinking skills necessary to navigate and innovate in a world increasingly shaped by AI. The future of AI in education is not just about building smarter technologies, but about creating smarter, more thoughtful individuals.

Stay tuned for more updates on how LARK Lab is combining AI, healthcare, and education to shape the future at CU Anschutz!