According to ASU Chief Information Officer Lev Gonick, the partnership will provide students and faculty with access to OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise, which has higher computation speeds than the public ChatGPT, more security and more data analytics capabilities for the purposes of aiding student learning, research and internal operations. He said the partnership has already yielded a bespoke set of tools for the university and will allow it to develop other AI-driven projects aimed at "revolutionizing educational techniques."
“In the last 13 months, generative AI has become the latest opportunity to leverage technology to advance student success,” he said. “We spent months working together with OpenAI on a product set that would work for Arizona State University as an enterprise, using [OpenAI’s] Enterprise ChatGPT, and that provides us with necessary privacy and security [capabilities], as well as the opportunity to really push the frontiers and the limits of the use of ChatGPT for teaching, learning and research.”
Gonick noted that while students and faculty have already been experimenting with generative AI tools like ChatGPT for education and research uses, the new platform has additional enhanced security features for data privacy, a major concern with GenAI tools.
Gonick said the university will ask students and faculty to submit ideas for how to best utilize the new platform next month. In addition to harnessing the technology for content generation, student advisement and tutoring, he said there's been growing interest at ASU in using AI to accelerate research efforts across departments.
“I think we already have cataloged over 50 research programs and labs using or interested in using generative AI,” he said.
The university is also looking to use AI tools for personalized academic support in order to boost student performance metrics like graduation rates.
"Hopefully, together with our great university systems that we have here in the United States, we can partner with AI companies to help create new pathways for student success, and I think that's the mutual overall goal that we have with OpenAI,” he said.
According to a news release, ASU's partnership with OpenAI follows on the heels of ASU's AI Acceleration initiative, which assembled technologists and researchers to develop next-generation AI tools.
The partnership also comes as ASU makes use of $340 million in recent funding devoted largely to projects and labs researching new AI models. Gonick suggested that the partnership with OpenAI may open future doors to joint research and development efforts.
“We’re keen to learn from ASU and to work towards expanding ChatGPT's impact in higher education," OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap said in a public statement about future collaborative efforts.
ASU President Michael Crow said in a public statement that the partnership and adoption of ChatGPT Enterprise will enable the university to participate in the "responsible evolution" of AI ed-tech tools.
“ASU recognizes that augmented and artificial intelligence systems are here to stay, and we are optimistic about their ability to become incredible tools that help students to learn, learn more quickly and understand subjects more thoroughly,” he said.
