IBL News | New York
OpenAI announced yesterday that it is committing $50 million in research grants, computing funding, and API access to a consortium of 15 research universities called NextGenAI.
The initiative follows the commercial offer of ChatGPT Edu for universities, launched in May 2024.
The institutions in the NextGenAI consortium are Caltech, the California State University system, Duke University, the University of Georgia, Harvard University, Howard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Michigan, the University of Mississippi, the Ohio State University, the University of Oxford, Sciences Po, Texas A&M University, Boston Children’s Hospital, the Boston Public Library.
OpenAI mentioned the following examples of universities using their tools and funding. The distribution of funds was not specified.
- “The Ohio State University is leveraging AI to accelerate the fields of digital health, advanced therapeutics, manufacturing, energy, mobility, and agriculture, while educators are using AI to create advanced learning models.
- Harvard University and Boston Children’s Hospital researchers use OpenAI tools and NextGenAI funding to reduce patients’ time to find the correct diagnosis, especially for rare orphan diseases, and improve AI alignment with human values in medical decision-making.
- Duke University scientists are using AI to pioneer metascience research, identifying the fields of science where AI can have the greatest benefit.
- Texas A&M is using NextGenAI resources to fuel its Generative AI Literacy Initiative, providing hands-on training to enhance the responsible use of AI in academic settings.
- MIT students and faculty will be able to use OpenAI’s API and compute funding to train and fine-tune their own AI models and develop new applications.
- Howard will use AI to develop curricula, experiment with new teaching methods, improve university operations, and give students hands-on AI experience to prepare them as future leaders.
- University of Oxford is leveraging AI for a broad research agenda, education, and university operations—its renowned Bodleian Library is digitizing rare texts and using OpenAI’s API to transcribe them, making centuries-old knowledge newly searchable by scholars worldwide.
- University of Mississippi is exploring new ways to integrate AI into their core mission of education, research, and service, and to advance AI-driven solutions that benefit their students, faculty, and the broader community.
- Boston Public Library, America’s first large free municipal public library, is digitizing public domain materials and using AI to make their information more accessible to patrons from all walks of life.”
