AI has a future in learning

Arizona State University recognizes the importance of ethical considerations and is actively building safeguards to ensure responsible AI development. 

This approach is meant to foster critical thinking skills in students and faculty alike, ensuring they can navigate the complexities of AI and leverage its potential for good.

From employing student workers who help identify cutting-edge technologies to faculty collaborations that bridge the gap between theory and practice, ASU is creating an environment where everyone has a role to play in harnessing AI. This collaborative spirit extends beyond the university walls, with strong industry collaborations, like the one with OpenAI, ensuring ASU stays at the forefront of AI advancements.

ASU Chief Information Officer Lev Gonick and Executive Director of AI Acceleration Elizabeth Reilley shed light on ASU's pioneering approach to implementing artificial intelligence across the university — one that uses AI to advance personalized learning, enhance research and foster a more human-centered path to education.

Looking ahead, both Gonick and Reilley express enthusiasm about the transformative potential of AI in education. 

Question: What is the focus of your work on advancing AI at ASU? 

Lev Gonick: The goal is to leverage our knowledge core at ASU to develop AI-driven projects aimed at advancing the ASU Charter — focusing on student success, aiding scholarly research and boosting administrative efficiency — all in the service of advancing community belonging and community building. AI at ASU is an enterprise-wide venture, beginning with leveraging generative AI, among many other AI technologies, to support student success. That’s the foundation of our commitment.

Elizabeth Reilley: In Enterprise Technology at ASU, we are committed to bringing the best of what technology has to offer to support our charter of advancing student success, research and societal impact. We focus on making AI accessible and useful for everyone in the ASU community. Our approach is to create platforms and tools that prioritize people, allowing anyone — regardless of their technical skills — to use AI to develop their own innovative solutions. We have world-class experts in countless fields, so instead of having an IT person create a tool for a sustainability expert, for example, we enable the sustainability expert to create and refine their own AI experience.

Q: What are ASU's strategic goals for implementing AI across its campuses and educational programs? 

Gonick: While AI is a disruptive — and potentially transformational — technology, we remain focused on the human element. Whether it is a faculty scholar or a professional staff member, our attention is always on student success. We are committed to innovation in using emerging technologies to help our students succeed. Enterprise Technology is the driving force, the differentiator and the vanguard in harnessing this technology to shape the future together. At the same time, we believe it is possible to hold multiple truths. We are intentionally engaged in critical design work to identify and address bias in our models and tools, as well as in the sources of content informing our models.

Q: How does ASU envision AI transforming the educational experience for students and faculty over the next decade? 

Gonick: As a leading institution committed to innovation and excellence, we are enthusiastic about the potential of generative AI to transform the landscape of higher education. We anticipate several advancements as these technologies mature and become more natively multimodal, supporting text, speech, images, video and hybrid modes. These advancements include personalized learning, enhanced teaching tools, improved accessibility and inclusion, predictive analytics for student success, innovations in research and administrative efficiencies.

Reilley: One of generative AI's most exciting transformative potentials is the possibility of creating a truly personalized and human-centered lifelong educational experience. While still in its early stages, it shows extraordinary potential to scale personalized learning by complementing our faculty's expertise. The pandemic highlighted the importance of human connection for our quality of life and learning.

I hope generative AI will allow faculty to focus more on the deeply human aspects of education — mentorship, inspiration, ethics and critical thinking — elements technology can never replace. I believe generative AI has the potential to unlock opportunities to meet each individual where they are, supporting them effectively to learn and grow their skills, ultimately enabling them to achieve their wildest dreams.

Q: What are the key ethical considerations that students should be aware of when working with AI technologies, and how can institutions promote the responsible development of AI systems? 

Reilley: The ethical considerations surrounding generative AI are both deep and vast and are of vital importance as we work to understand and leverage this potentially transformational technology. A few key ethical considerations for students, faculty and staff include understanding the potential for misinformation, the importance of data ethics and awareness of bias. Institutions can promote the responsible development of AI systems by fostering critical thinking and encouraging healthy skepticism. We should be mindful that, while generative AI excels in creating persuasive content, it may not always provide accurate information. 

Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate every claim, track down the original sources of information and be cognizant of the data used to train AI models. By critically engaging with the important ethical questions around generative AI, we can make better decisions and impact the trajectory of AI development toward more responsible and beneficial outcomes.

Q: How are students and faculty involved in ASU's AI projects, and what opportunities are they available to contribute to AI research and development? 

Reilley: There are a wide variety of ways in which students and faculty at ASU are involved in AI projects and research and development.

We have about a dozen student workers on our AI Acceleration team who help us stay on the cutting edge of emerging technologies as we develop and evaluate the generative AI tools and platforms that our team creates. Working alongside senior engineers, these students identify promising new technologies and prototype them through proof-of-concept projects. This collaboration ensures ASU remains at the forefront of AI by incorporating the latest advancements into its enterprise platforms.

Additionally, a postdoctoral fellow working with our team is embedded in the Learning Engineering Institute, led by Danielle McNamara out of the Provost’s Office. She helps ensure the ethical development of AI tools by collaborating with institute faculty and ASU's data science team to expand the university's Ethical AI Engine to encompass new research-based evaluation metrics for internal and external AI models.

Our Faculty Ethics Committee on AI Technology has drafted a set of AI design principles to guide our AI work. At the last committee meeting, we reviewed applied case studies and applied the draft principles to ensure they were actionable and aligned with the committee's goals. Our faculty has been key in grounding our AI work and bridging the gap between ethical theory and practice.

One of the best-known opportunities for the involvement of students and faculty in ASU’s AI work is the AI Innovation Challenge, which we support in collaboration with the Provost’s Office, Knowledge Enterprise and other units across ASU. With more than 200 awarded projects launched in the first and second rounds, this initiative invites proposals from faculty, staff and student researchers to use ChatGPT Enterprise, an OpenAI product offering increased security and data protections across academic, research and work environments.

Q: Can you elaborate on ASU’s partnerships with industry leaders, such as OpenAI, and how these collaborations shape the university’s AI approach? 

Gonick: ASU has a longstanding history of partnering with industry leaders to inform their market strategies for education, and our collaboration with OpenAI is a prime example of this commitment. This partnership is crucial as it places ASU at the forefront of technological advances, allowing us to integrate cutting-edge AI technologies into our educational framework.

Our work with OpenAI is built on a shared commitment to fostering environments where innovation can thrive. Together, we aim to create dynamic platforms that encourage groundbreaking ideas and provide our students and faculty with access to the latest AI tools and resources. Additionally, this collaboration enhances our research capabilities and ensures our curriculum remains relevant and forward-thinking.

Beyond OpenAI, we have established significant relationships with several prominent tech organizations that fuel innovation and support ASU’s charter. These industry partnerships include Adobe, AI21, Apple, Arista, AWS, CrowdStrike, Dreamscape Learn, Google, Salesforce, Slack, Verizon and Zoom.

Q: How is ASU ensuring its AI initiatives stay current with rapidly evolving technological advancements?

Reilley: The mere existence of our AI Acceleration team is key to ensuring that ASU not only keeps pace with the rapid evolution of AI but also positions itself to lead and impact the trajectory of the technology. A dedicated AI technology team provides the space needed to develop cutting-edge technologies and robust, innovative methods for evaluating these technologies across a wide array of ethical and practical dimensions. The scope of evaluation includes everything from bias and fairness to accuracy, sustainability and fiscal responsibility.

Q: What opportunities related to AI in higher education most excite you? 

Gonick: I am excited about how AI can enable higher education to move from mechanical search and assembly to a new AI-centric era focused on engagement and synthesis. In the AI era, literacy and competency will be related to advancing learner agency (engagement) and teaching powerful new analytical skills (synthesis).

In the AI age, we will have to rethink what it means to assess learning and to educate and be educated. AI promises to democratize access to education, advance personalization, and ensure inclusivity and equal opportunity. In addition to providing advanced tools for data analysis, content creation and problem-solving, it can boost creativity and innovation.

Additionally, higher education is responsible for educating and securing the environment and using technological advances. While we cannot guarantee that the tools will always be used to advance our design aspirations, we maintain a key role in society by socializing the importance of developing critical thinking skills, the ability to collaborate with others, and the importance of ethics and the ethical trade-offs in how these new skills can be used to address the many key challenges of the 21st century.

Reilley: We know from hundreds of studies over decades how important human connection is to student success and learning. I envision a future where individuals involved in all aspects of the educational process, from the classroom to the back office, are freed up from mundane tasks that do not contribute to self-actualization. This freedom will allow them to focus on creating a greater impact and fostering connection with our students and community.

Over the past year, some of my most fulfilling experiences and most direct contributions to student growth have been as a mentor in several AI-related hackathons hosted by various groups across ASU. I am excited about the potential of generative AI to make these high-impact interactions more common, supporting the success of our students and learners in ways we never imagined and bringing greater meaning and humanity to education.