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Welcome back! Universities grappling with slowing enrollment and imperiled federal funding are looking for new ways to cut costs. How much will artificial intelligence help? The management school at the University of California, Los Angeles has been developing AI applications for its 500 faculty and staff members, including tools that might automate the work of teaching assistants that help professors handle large classes. Howard Miller, who oversees software at the UCLA Anderson management school, said his team developed a prototype tool using models from OpenAI and Anthropic to give students feedback on their essays, for instance. One professor is currently using the tool, and the school plans to roll it out to more faculty in January, Miller said. Faculty members aren’t yet convinced AI is good enough to replace human TAs, and the school hasn't gathered enough information to predict how much money its AI tools could save the school. “Course assistants are a cost that we‘re looking to cut university-wide,” Miller said. “But I think this is something that the school still has to think about—it’s one of these pedagogical things that not everyone’s on the same page about yet.” The move comes as AI is transforming higher education. College students heavily use ChatGPT and other AI tools, leading many universities to implement a patchwork of rules over how students should use such tools. The change has prompted some teachers to focus more on in-person exams in the classroom than homework projects, while some startups think AI could completely take over the teaching process someday, giving each student personalized lessons. Miller thinks it’s inevitable that AI will become commonplace throughout the university. “Right when ChatGPT came out, a dean came to me and said, ‘I put my final [exam] into ChatGPT and [the chatbot] got a B+. What's our plan?’” Miller said. Miller’s team also recently used software from startup StackAI to develop an AI-powered app that writes letters of recommendation, saving faculty members time. Faculty type basic details about a student who has requested a letter, such as their grades and accomplishments, and the app writes a draft of the full letter. AI is “one of those things that you might worry could dehumanize the process of writing recommendation letters, but faculty also say that process [of manually writing the letters] is very labor intensive,” Miller said. “So far they’ve gotten a lot out of” the new app.
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