Generative AI Taskforce and Updates
Generative AI is becoming an integral part of daily life—powering web searches, assisting with writing, and streamlining countless tasks. This exciting technology offers tremendous potential for our work; however, it also comes with responsibilities, including safeguarding data and managing inherent risks.
To address these opportunities and challenges, the Advancement Services team has launched a Generative AI Taskforce. This group includes staff from across University Advancement and is charged with:
- Clarifying what we mean by Generative AI
- Educating staff on the University of Utah policies and approved AI tools for our work
- Identifying opportunities and risks in advancement-related use cases, and recommending policies and guidelines for our community
A sincere thank you to Nick Girling, who is chairing the committee, and to all members dedicating their time to this important effort. The taskforce aims to present policy and guideline recommendations to leadership by year-end.
Big News: ChatGPT Edu Coming to Campus
Two weeks ago, the university announced the launch of ChatGPT Edu for campus use—a fantastic addition to our list of approved AI tools. While this is an exciting development, please keep these important points in mind:
- Personal AI Chat tools are not permitted for university work. Using personal (particularly free) licenses exposes our data to the public. Authorized university accounts ensure data security and prevent our data from being used to train public AI models and potentially being shared with people all over the world.
- Official university licenses for ChatGPT Edu and Copilot are not approved for sensitive or restricted data. Donor information, for example, is classified as restricted under University of Utah policy. Even with these approved university tools, please be vigilant not to include sensitive or restricted data in your prompts.
Thank you for helping us use these tools responsibly as we embrace innovation.