UC Office of the President is launching its AI Buddy Program this month to help its staff members explore and build confidence with AI tools.<\/p>\n
The peer-to-peer program aims to connect UCOP staff colleagues with different levels of AI experience or similar job roles, according to the UCOP article. AI-experienced participants will be partnered with less-experienced colleagues. More proficient AI users will be \u201ccomfortable helping others navigate use cases, answer questions and share practical tips.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe AI Buddy Program is an internal, voluntary program to facilitate collaborative learning of AI tools for UCOP staff,\u201d said UCOP spokesperson Stett Holbrook in an email.<\/p>\n
The program sign-up form allows staff to select which AI tools interest them, with options such as ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini and more. Staff can also select topics of interest such as \u201cAI for teaching and learning,\u201d \u201cEvaluating AI outputs and fact-checking\u201d and more.<\/p>\n
According to Haas School of Business professor Mathijs de Vaan, workplace initiatives that focus on developing AI literacy are \u201cnecessary but not sufficient.\u201d<\/p>\n
He noted that, ideally, organizations could help staff identify when to use AI in their work and lower barriers to adopting AI tools through strategies such as specific training.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the folks that are initially skeptical see that there\u2019s more and more people in the organization using the tool,\u201d de Vaan said. \u201cAnd using the tool in such a way that they can actually do their work better and they enjoy work more \u2014 then the likelihood that these initial skeptics will come around will also increase.\u201d<\/p>\n
De Vaan added that peer-to-peer initiatives have been \u201creally effective\u201d for the adoption of other technologies in the past.<\/p>\n
Because UCOP staff members are not required to participate in the program as it \u201cmay involve stepping away from regular responsibilities,\u201d participants are encouraged to discuss participation with their supervisor in advance, according to the UCOP article.<\/p>\n
According to de Vaan, voluntary workplace AI integration programs risk widening the gap between staff members willing to adopt AI in their work and those who are not initially interested. However, he added that mandatory implementation strategies may risk \u201cinternal resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s very obvious that there are things that (large language models) can do that we couldn\u2019t do very efficiently before them,\u201d said Keanan Joyner, an assistant professor in UC Berkeley\u2019s psychology department. \u201cI just don\u2019t know if that\u2019s necessarily a good trade-off to the negative potential effects that AI has on folks. And I think that\u2019s largely a function of LLMs \u2026 not (being) able to communicate uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joyner said the use of AI tools such as large language models in the workplace can improve efficiency, but risks staff \u201cfeeling more burnt out\u201d as they may need to spend time repeatedly reviewing and reiterating the product of work that was intended to be offloaded to AI tools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UC Office of the President is launching its AI Buddy Program this month to help its staff members…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[2007,156369,2269,35346,36512,23167,89993,4834,156370,143,145,144,32132,30647],"class_list":["post-387815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-ai","tag-ai-buddy-program","tag-chatgpt","tag-claude","tag-google-gemini","tag-haas-school-of-business","tag-keanan-joyner","tag-large-language-models","tag-mathijs-de-vaan","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-stett-holbrook","tag-uc-office-of-the-president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}