University of Nebraska President Jeffrey Gold says he uses generative artificial intelligence daily.
“I use it every day to answer questions and to help me think through some decision-making issues, to give me background information about people that I'm going to meet,” Gold said.
This integration of artificial intelligence, or AI, into daily life is only growing. And NU signaled it won’t be left behind.
At this year’s State of the University Address on Thursday, Gold announced the launch of NU’s Center of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence, an academic hub for AI across NU campuses. It will be a combination of facilitation, guest speakers, campus events, and media and publications centered around AI, Gold said.
The announcement comes after an AI task force made up of professors and administrators conducted research and a survey across NU to understand how AI is being used. The center was a recommendation in the task force’s final report.
“The task force outlined that the Center of Excellence would really be an overarching hub for research, education, workforce and development for the system,” said David Jackson, interim executive vice president and provost and chair of the task force. “I'm not going to say it's going to work exactly the way this report has things outlined, but this is a good start as to a potential pathway.”
The center will be initially funded with a $250,000 Google grant awarded to NU last November, which coincided with the company’s announcement of $930 million in data center investments in Nebraska. Google also awarded Creighton University a $250,000 grant last November, which is being used to fund its libraries' emerging technologies initiative.
A new Google data center is set to open in Lincoln this fall. There have been multiple examples of grant investments at universities in states with Google data centers, including Oklahoma, Ohio and Virginia.
Google did not respond to immediate requests for comment about the use of this grant at NU.
The NU AI center will have subgroups related to AI in education, research, business applications and ethics, Gold said. The center’s success will be measured by the percentage of general education courses that have AI components built into them, the percentage of research programs that are built around generative AI, and enrollment in undergraduate and graduate degree programs on AI, among other metrics.
“We want students to be well-versed in using AI, understanding its strengths and weaknesses in a general sense, as well as how they might use AI when they get out in the workforce,” Jackson said.
The center is just the latest AI initiative launched by NU. Last fall, the university introduced an undergraduate AI degree, the first of its kind in Nebraska and one of only a few in the Midwest.
“We want to make AI specialists,” Mahadevan Subramaniam, the department head for information science and technology at UNO and a professor, told Nebraska Public Media when the program launched. “We want to make AI leaders, and we want them to also be aware of the societal and socioeconomic impacts of this and be responsible AI shepherds or AI leaders.”
Gold says AI is still a delicate balance, and there are risks.
“My concerns really are on students learning to depend on this as opposed to embracing their own creative abilities. I'm concerned about whether or not there's accuracy in some of the scientific applications of this, as again, it relates to things called hallucinations. I'm concerned about the fact that, because it's only historically based, it could potentially be biased,” Gold said.
But Gold said AI is here to stay and we need to embrace it while understanding the risks.
“It's only going to get better and bigger and more ubiquitous over time,” he said.
The NU AI task force members will be transitioned to the Center of Excellence if they wish to, Gold said, and the university is searching for someone to lead the initiative, which it hopes attracts more investments from Google, or others.
“The Google dollars will be helpful to us, but, you know, obviously we're going to have to build well beyond that, but you got to start somewhere,” Gold said.