In recent years, many have watched the rise of artificial intelligence with a combination of dread and alarm. However, finance and government major Tucker Peters ’28 embraces what lies ahead.
Peters is the president and co-founder of the AI Club at the College of William and Mary, which officially launched last April.
Upon his arrival at the College, Peters hit the ground running and began preparations for the club in the fall. He started by contacting Douglas Schmidt ’84 M.A. ’86, the dean of the College’s new School of Computing, Data Sciences and Physics.
The club now meets Wednesdays at 7 p.m. in the new Integrated Science Center 4. While Peters estimates the student organization has 50 or 60 active members, attendance often depends on the meeting. There is a general body meeting once a month, but other gatherings are more specialized.
Meetings range from educational talks to competitions and AI workshops. Earlier in the semester, Davison Douglas Professor of Law Margaret Hu hosted a debate between a College student and a Georgetown University student to discuss the value of a liberal arts education in the age of AI. On another occasion, the club hosted an AI Case-a-thon, in which around 30 students competed for a total of $13,000 in prize money.
The club is currently developing two projects with the College’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business. One is a pre-major and major advising dashboard designed to help students plan their academic paths, allowing them to explore majors and potential schedules independently of their busy advisors.
“They usually advise 60 or more people at a time. It’s hard,” Peters said.
Faculty have experimented with the dashboard, which Peters hopes students will test next month.
The second project is an AI research database intended to help students navigate research opportunities without sending hundreds of emails.
“It’s super inefficient,” Peters said. “Imagine if you could just go onto a website, see all the professors’ listings for research and just upload a resume, answer some questions and apply.”
In addition to running AI Club, Peters is a portfolio manager for an investment fund, a freelance software developer and the creator of GenEdu, an AI study tool. He also built the club’s website — using AI, of course.
“Everything’s AI,” he said. “I don’t do anything without AI.”
While Peters explores a variety of models, he primarily uses Claude.
Peters has spent most of his life interested in government, finance and macroeconomics. Before graduating from high school, however, Peters had not taken a single computer science course and was on the road to Wall Street and a career in investment banking. He still hopes to have a future in those fields, but AI has become an essential part of his path.
“I’ve always been a big advocate for teaching myself,” he said.
Peters said he has always recognized AI’s potential.
“I think that one of the coolest things about AI in general is the fact that it democratizes knowledge.”
Peters described how skills that would have taken him years to learn can now be picked up in months or weeks.
“I just started asking a lot of questions,” he said. “And it sucked at first, but as it got better, I was able to get better.”
Peters identified AI’s risks, particularly in education.
“I think it’s one of those technologies that’s gonna change how we operate mentally for generations,” he said. “With any technological advancement, there’s risk, but instead of shutting it down, we should be thinking about how to mitigate those risks.”
The club has also assembled a policy team, which hopes to help professors develop their own AI policies. For some professors, that means teaching students how to use AI tools in their work.
“If you don’t learn how to use AI, it’s actually going to hurt you,” Peters said. “If you don’t use AI for coding now, you’re not going to get hired at Amazon or Google.”
For some other subjects, such as philosophy courses, the policy team has recommended limiting computer use and assigning blue-book exams to prevent cheating.
Peters is also eager to explore risks outside of education through the AI Club.
Wednesday, March 18, the AI Club will host a talk from the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a nonprofit research institute that argues advanced AI could ultimately lead to human extinction. While Peters does not share this belief, he is excited to hear as many perspectives as possible.
“Do your research, create your own philosophies based on that and don’t back down,” he said. “I think that’s one thing that the AI Club wants to do.”
While AI will continue evolving at a rapid pace, Peter believes the goals of the club will stay the same.
“I think if a school club can say that it has some sort of tangible impact on professors or students or William and Mary at large, that’s a very special thing,” Peters said. “So, I’m just very excited to see some sort of positive change.”
