IBL News | New York
Yale University announced that it will invest over $150 million to support AI development and AI literacy among students, faculty, and staff. This investment will include computing infrastructure, access to secure generative AI tools, targeted faculty hires, seed grants, and opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration.
More specifically, the investment will be distributed on:
1. Research Infrastructure: Yale will acquire approximately 450 GPUs over the next few years, enhancing its high-performance computing capabilities for AI research.
2. Secure AI Access: The university is launching the Clarity platform, offering a safe (walled-garden environment) that hosts an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o for the Yale community.
3. Faculty Expansion: Yale plans to recruit over 20 new faculty members specializing in AI-related research and teaching.
4. Curriculum Development: Seed grants will be offered to review and adapt curricula across various disciplines in the context of AI.
5. Collaboration Initiatives: Yale will host AI-focused research symposiums, prompt-a-thons, and seminars and offer seed grants to foster interdisciplinary collaboration.
In a message to the university community, Yale Provost Scott Strobel explained that the $150 million commitment responds to the report of the Yale Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, elaborated by the 18-member group of faculty and campus leaders.
Strobel said that the Clarity platform is appropriate for use with all data types, including high-risk data, while all security standards are observed.
Its chatbot can create content, provide coding assistance, perform data and image analysis, provide text-to-speech, and more. Over time, the platform may expand to incorporate additional AI tools, including other large language models.
“Clarity is designed to evolve as generative AI develops and the community offers feedback.”
In addition to Clarity, the university will offer faculty, students, and staff access to other AI tools, including Microsoft Copilot Enterprise and Adobe Firefly.
