ASU announces a unique collaboration with OpenAI on using ChatGPT in education and research

Arizona State University have just announced a unique collaboration with OpenAI to explore, extend, and leverage the use of ChatGPT in higher education and academic research

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In a first of its kind collaboration, Arizona State University has just announced that it will be working with OpenAI to bring the advanced capabilities of ChatGPT to the university, and push the boundaries of generative AI in the future of education, learning, and research.

This is an incredibly exciting move, and one that has the potential to accelerate the transformative use of generative AI in academia and higher education.

Students, staff and faculty at ASU have been clamoring for access to the ChatGPT within the academic environment for the past year — myself included. And while many of us have been using the platform in our own work (including my own course on using ChatGPT), the subscription cost of access to GPT-4 capabilities and issues over data privacy have been stumbling blocks for many.

The new collaboration doesn’t provide blanket access to ChatGPT Enterprise and all the features it offers — hopefully that’ll be possible in the near future. But it does create unique opportunities for a number of creative thinkers to explore and push the limits of how generative AI can be leveraged in learning, education, and research.

Initially, ASU will invite submissions from faculty and staff to implement the innovative uses of ChatGPT Enterprise — OpenAI’s commercial platform for ChatGPT. The main foci will be enhancing student success, forging new avenues for innovative research, and streamlining organizational processes.

I’m fully expecting this to unleash a tsunami of creativity and innovation — with access to ChatGPT Enterprise, faculty and staff (and hopefully students at some point) will be empowered to explore new ways of using generative AI in academia that simply haven’t been possible up to now. And, of course, if this goes as expected, the feedback loop with OpenAI should be transformative — not only for ASU but for the use of such foundation models in education and research more broadly.

Of course, there are potential challenges here as we’re entering new territory with the technology and it’s potential uses. But with the right checks and balances in place — and both ASU and OpenAI are being diligent here — this could be a truly catalytic collaboration.

As you might gather, I’m very excited to see where it leads!

And of course, the hope is that this is just the first step in more universities beginning to work with AI companies like OpenAI to build technologies and uses that transform how we learn, discover, and grow — both as individuals and as a society.