Thoughts on the First AI-Powered University

Billing it as an historical first, the Office of the Chancellor of the California State University system announced a partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to every student, staff, and professor at the 23 campuses. That is access for about half a million people. In an email “To All”, Chancellor Mildred García said this partnership creates the “nation’s first and largest AI-powered public university system to serve its entire community.”

It has been over two years since the introduction of ChatGPT and the start of the generative AI disruption. We have been chronicling this technology’s impact on universities, particularly our institution CSU, Chico. This new partnership is poised to alter the course of this disruption in ways foreseen but opening up a slew of new issues and opportunities. In this post, we will give an overview of this partnership, what it changes and what it does not, and provide some initial thoughts on some likely implications. 

The Details

First, a quick rundown of the details. The CSU will in short order give all students, faculty, and staff access to dedicated AI platforms for free through a central hub. Both free and dedicated are key here. The deal with OpenAI is for ChatGPT Edu, which is OpenAI’s product that is “Powered by GPT-4o, ChatGPT Edu can reason across text and vision and use advanced tools such as data analysis…enterprise-level security and controls…” As the latest general model, GPT-4o is currently a $20 upgrade from the free version. Check out Kathryn Palmer’s deep rundown in Inside Higher Ed.

Chancellor Garcia says, “This initiative, which surpasses any existing university model in both scale and impact, positions the CSU as a global leader among higher education systems in the impactful, responsible and equitable adoption of artificial intelligence.” We think this partnership has other likely and potential implications. 

What Changes?

In Responses to ChatGPT, our first blog post ever published in January 2023, we outlined faculty and staff’s three likely responses to the rollout of ChatGPT. Over the last two years, we have largely been shown to be correct, such that people have sorted into three dispositions: ignore, fight, and embrace. With the CSU announcement, we now have evidence of a clear pivot towards “embrace” at the highest levels of the system. This is by far the biggest takeaway of this announcement.

With the CSU now embracing and integrating generative AI here are some areas that we think are now different and some that might become new avenues of discussion if not disruption.

Normalization: This embrace will work to normalize the use of gen AI in all aspects of the university for students, staff, and faculty. Yet with this normalization a paradoxical state of normlessness remains namely: what is “appropriate use”, so a “wild west” situation persists in which the technology is official but how we use it remains in states of grey. Does CSU delegate ethical and implementation details to each campus or worse each unit or faculty member? If it doesn’t go well, will the CSU and/or the Chancellor hold responsibility? 

Efficiencies: the normalized and widespread use of generative AI will certainly lead to efficiencies and workload substitutions. Many of us on the embrace side have already found enormous time savings. Yet, from past experience we can envision a workload rebound effect as new tasks are assigned and more work added. Conversely, the budget currently sucks so we can all envision labor cutting measures. 

Core competencies: no doubt this partnership will renew and deepen concerns and conversations about teaching and learning, two of the university’s core competencies. Opinions are currently divided and they will likely divide further. 

Fight: The public-private partnership creates a new front of the counter movement against gen AI at the university (see also broader culture wars). Faculty and staff that are skeptical or outright hostile to the technology and corporations have a new line of attack.

Embrace: Yes opposition, but this partnership clearly opens new conversations about the role of these technologies on campus and in wider society. This could lead to experimentation and necessary “soul searching” about why and how universities do what they do. 

Equity: Partnership eliminates the equity gap on access to the latest AI models. We all get the same one.

Vision: This announcement demonstrates that university leadership can act with a vision. Whether that vision is good or bad is another question and a question all of us will likely be debating for a while. 

Speculation: does this vision position CSU as frontier leader or hasten its irrelevance in the long run as AI takes over more and more core functions of the university? 

The CSU is making a bet. We won’t know for some time how it pays off. In the meantime, it is safe to say that generative AI will officially be in the mix of everything we all do at the university.