Website about AI efforts at the U is live

UIT is proud to unveil ai.utah.edu, a website dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI)-related resources and initiatives at the University of Utah.

“We’re looking to mature and grow the website as the university matures and grows its strategies around AI use,” said Shawn Halladay, associate director for Infrastructure Engineering in the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) organization. “We really want this to be a collaborative space, where everybody’s welcome, and all content is relevant.”

To ensure the website remains relevant and engaging, Halladay said, “we will continuously update and expand the content as new AI developments emerge.”

“This approach will help us keep pace with the rapidly evolving AI landscape at the University of Utah, and provide our community with the latest resources and insights,” he said.

The website is part of a broader effort to find common ground on how generative AI tools should and shouldn’t be used for learning and work. The U is actively developing resources and policies around generative AI use in all areas, including information security and data privacy, compliance, copyright, and academic integrity.

The ai.utah.edu project is connected to the One-U Responsible Artificial Intelligence Initiative (One-U RAI), led by the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute. The mission of One-U RAI, which launched in 2023 with a $100 million commitment, is to “realize a transdisciplinary ecosystem that catalyzes and nurtures responsible innovation, translation, application, and study of the function, use, and impacts of artificial intelligence to address scientific and societal grand challenges.” The One-U RAI has an initial focus on three thematic areas that build on the U’s research strengths — environment, health care and wellness, and teaching and learning.

AI is a vast area of computer science that in and of itself is not an emerging technology (the term was coined by a Dartmouth University professor in 1956). What’s new is the advent of generative AI, which, unlike its predecessors, can create content by extrapolating from large sets of data.

“It can do things at scales, at speeds, that we cannot imagine,” SCI Director Dr. Manish Parashar said during a recent U Rising podcast. “I see tremendous potential in AI. It does things that humans don’t do very well, like assimilate tremendous amounts of data and find patterns quickly. So, in that sense, it can really help augment humans, providing them tools that can make them significantly more effective in whatever they do.”

Website development efforts were led by the Web Support & Usability team in UIT’s University Support Services, in consultation with David Hawkins, lead principal DevOps engineer in UIT, who curated much of the site’s content about Microsoft Copilot, currently the only commercial AI tool sanctioned for use at the university.

“I give [Web Content Specialist Abbey Allen] so much credit,” said Website Services Program Manager Emily Jacoby. “This was one of her first major website builds, and she took it and ran with it. This was a major project with a lot of moving parts, not to mention that AI is a high-profile, constantly evolving topic. It takes a lot of commitment just to make sure the content is up to date.”

“It was a really big collaborative effort,” Allen said.

In addition to researching what other universities are doing online regarding their AI initiatives, the Web Support & Usability team gathered content from many disparate sources.

The website covers a range of AI-related topics, including:

• Microsoft Copilot information and training (please note you must be signed in to the U’s instance of Copilot to protect your data while using AI chat)
• Teaching resources on generative AI tools
• Information on chatbots and prompt literacy
• AI and AI-adjacent courses and programs at the U
• Center for High Performance Computing AI and machine learning resources
• School of Computing AI research areas
• News about AI at the U
• Support for AI use

In addition to her contributions to the website’s content, Dr. Caren Frost, associate vice president for Research Integrity and Compliance in the Office of the Vice President for Research (VPR), recently formed an AI Community of Practice (ACP), which meets online on the fourth Tuesday of each month, from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., via Zoom.

Rather than a formal agenda, ACP meetings are open discussions on a specific “topic of the day.”

“We’ve found that people are really invested, engaged, and eager to learn what we’re doing with AI at the university,” Frost said. “The first time they attend one of our meetings, they just listen and say, ‘Wow, this is such a robust conversation. I had no idea.’ They’re eager to know how AI can work for them and what steps we’re taking to make it safe.”

Another website contributor, Dr. Penny Atkins, SCI director for research and science in support of the One-U RAI, encourages people outside of the U community to join the discussion as well.

“A major component of responsible AI is technological literacy,” Atkins said. “As we continue to get a handle on AI use at the university, we want to make sure the broader community has access to the information we have here. We’re finally finding common ground on an extremely active area of research, but there are people who have access to none of this information. That needs to change.”

Kelly Hermans, SCI public relations and communications manager, noted that SCI has also partnered with the Leonardo science, technology, and art museum on three panel discussions that feature university faculty speaking about AI — The Leonardo & One-U RAI: AI and You on November 1; AI in Pop Culture vs. Reality on December 6; and Cancer and AI (date TBD). All panel discussions are open to the public. Attendees are invited to explore the museum’s Into the Mind of AI exhibit following the discussion.

If you have questions about or suggestions to improve ai.utah.edu, please complete and submit this contact form.

 

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