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Indian American professor bats for AI literacy
Kumar emphasized the need for a structured approach to AI education, advocating for what she calls a “show-not-tell approach.”
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Abhilasha Kumar / bowdoin.edu
Indian American psychology professor Abhilasha Kumar is calling for a stronger emphasis on promoting artificial intelligence literacy in the younger generation over its use.
In a recent opinion piece published in The Bangor Daily News, a prominent Maine news website, Kumar stressed that students should go beyond simply using AI tools and instead develop a deep understanding of how these systems function.
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“What our students need is the confidence to engage with these technologies in a critical, yet informed manner. To achieve this goal, AI literacy has to be the first step, over and above AI use,” Kumar wrote.
An assistant professor of psychology at Bowdoin College, Kumar highlighted the growing role of AI in workplaces, noting that while not all students will pursue careers in technology, they are likely to encounter AI in some capacity. In her own classroom, she has observed that AI can be a valuable tool for learning, helping students refine ideas and correct minor errors in academic work.
However, she cautioned that AI models such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek’s R1 have limitations. “They are not programmed to thoughtfully combine multiple reliable sources of information, or provide nuanced responses to deeper, more open-ended questions. Knowing this is incredibly important for how one may want to engage with AI,” she said.
Kumar emphasized the need for a structured approach to AI education, advocating for what she calls a “show-not-tell approach.” “Instead of handing over the tools to students and leaving them to discover these ‘black boxes,’ our students need to see how the models learn, how and why they fail — with concrete examples, scientific rigor, and dedicated coursework,” she explained.
Last year, Bowdoin College received a three-year grant from the Davis Foundation for its “AI in Teaching Initiative,” aimed at enhancing AI understanding in classrooms.
Kumar has an extensive academic background spanning multiple disciplines. She earned her undergraduate degree in mathematics and computing from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi before pursuing a master’s in liberal arts with a concentration in computer science and psychology at Ashoka University. She later completed her doctorate and masters of arts at Washington University in St. Louis, focusing on cognitive mechanisms underlying language processing and memory retrieval.
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