A step forward in charting the future of AI in higher education
Earlier today, OpenAI announced its newest offering: ChatGPT Edu. The goal, as outlined in their announcement, is to offer a version of ChatGPT built for universities to responsibly deploy artificial intelligence (AI) to students, faculty, researchers, and campus operations.
Arizona State University (ASU) — which officially launched its collaboration with OpenAI back in January — played a key role in helping inform the new offering.
“ASU has a longstanding history of working with industry leaders to inform their market strategy for education,” shared Lev Gonick, ASU’s chief information officer. “This is important as it places ASU at the forefront of advances in technology.”
Since February, the university has activated over 200 projects using ChatGPT Enterprise across academic, research and work environments through its AI Innovation Challenge. “We have a lot of evidence of success underway and have been working in lockstep with OpenAI to provide feedback on ways to enhance ChatGPT to meet the needs of an academic setting,” Gonick noted.
This positions ASU to actively participate in defining new uses of generative AI in higher education.
Key insights and feedback pave the way
OpenAI will begin to roll out ChatGPT Edu this summer with features that include access to GPT-4o — the latest model that now reasons across audio and vision, in addition to text — as well as robust administrative controls and data security, to name a few.
The AI Acceleration team at ASU, which has been instrumental in coordinating the deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise across the university, looks forward to the new offering.
"We prioritize access and impact in all our work, and ChatGPT Edu is a good step in that direction at ASU and beyond,” shared Elizabeth Reilley, executive director of AI Acceleration. This included measures for provisioning and privacy, which are reflected in the new ChatGPT Edu offering.
"In line with our commitment to principled innovation impact-focused AI strategy, we have invested in evaluating and collecting feedback from our community,” Reilley shared. “The OpenAI team has been highly responsive, translating our insights into action by releasing new features and offerings."
This work would eventually help inform the new administration controls, like group permissions and System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM), that will be available under ChatGPT Edu.
“It’s great to see our work have an impact beyond ASU,” Reilley continued. “The team at OpenAI has been instrumental in our success, and we are proud to see how our efforts have directly informed this new offering.”
Work is underway to enable the ASU community to gain access to ChatGPT Edu as early as fall 2024.
100+ projects underway at ASU this summer
Today, the AI Innovation Challenge is placing ChatGPT Enterprise into the hands of ASU faculty, staff, researchers, and — as of summer 2024 – students.
To date, the university has activated 200 projects — 105 projects in spring 2024 and 114 projects underway this summer.
The work will remain focused on the three areas of impact: enhance teaching and learning, advance research, and improve business operations to create the future of work. And for this summer, projects now have access to GPT-4o.
Take, for example, the AI tutor being developed in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. The virtual study buddy is designed to help psychology students answer questions, spark discussions and even create quizzes.
“The goal is for the Cognitive Companion to act as a real course tutor, not just a repository of information, so it will be directly helpful where appropriate while also pushing students to probe and develop their understanding in various contexts,” said assistant professor and team lead Derek Powell.
Beyond the classroom, researchers are using generative AI tools to advance their work. A team from The School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence is tackling traffic congestion with a real-time traffic management system. This system will analyze real-time data to predict traffic flow and optimize routes for a mix of autonomous and human-driven vehicles.
"Our research has the potential to make cities smarter and safer," explained lead undergraduate project researcher Vishnu Nandam. "By using AI for real-time decision-making, we can create a more sustainable transportation system for everyone."
Continuing their work from the spring semester, a team from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication continues to explore the potential of AI in news production with its immersive newsroom project.
Professor Julia Thompson emphasized the importance of responsible AI use: “With this project, we’re hoping to test implementations of AI that meet our journalistic standards while also helping us streamline some of our workflows; we also aim to be transparent with our news audience in our use of AI and to expose students to the benefits and pitfalls of the technology.”
“Both ASU and OpenAI have a shared commitment to fostering environments where innovation can thrive,” Gonick concluded. “In doing so, we can create dynamic platforms that encourage groundbreaking ideas.”
ASU continues to position itself as a leader in paving the way for a future where intelligent machines can enhance learning, improve our communities, and transform how we work and communicate.