Ditch the DIY Approach to AI on Campus
A platform approach, which makes the full power of AI available to your students, staff, and faculty, is a longer-term solution. With this approach, multiple AI models or RAG entry points are used to support various use cases in a more operational approach. The models can be tuned to different datasets and the needs of different departments, teams, or classes. A variety of AI-enabled applications and models can be deployed, such as chatbots, educational tools, and content recommendation engines with behaviors based on the end user's profile.
A platform approach provides far more flexibility for integrating with other apps and software a department might be using. It will give you more flexibility, as the LLMs are not only pre-engineered to support different functions, but can also be tuned to be more creative or conservative with their answers depending on your organization's needs.
The University of Michigan is a great example of how to employ a full-platform approach successfully. Their deployment is grounded in four principles: security (all data that belongs to the university stays there, without being potentially exposed to outside parties); privacy (all data is private and black boxed); accessibility (all models are accessibility compliant); and equity (information is available to staff, students, and professors, for any purposes).
Making AI Work for Your Organization
AI is here to stay, it's readily available, and it's likely most of your students, faculty, and staff are already using it in some capacity. If your institution does not provide it to students and faculty, they're going to get it somewhere else. The best way to ensure it's being used appropriately is to cost-effectively create your own sanctioned AI systems that are accurate, secure, and trusted.
Fortunately, there are ways to do that without breaking your school's budget or hiring teams of AI experts. Open source has made AI less daunting to implement and customize for every education institution. It's just a matter of choosing the right option to fit your organization's current and future needs.
About the Author
Damien Eversmann is chief architect for education at Red Hat. Having spent the bulk of his career working in or with the public sector, he is somewhat of an expert when it comes to IT in government and higher education. Throughout his working life, he has served as a developer, system administrator, development manager, enterprise architect, and technology director.