\n\tBy SHANNON O. WELLS<\/p>\n
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\n\tIn his presentation to Faculty Assembly about how artificial intelligence (AI) is being incorporated into Pitt infrastructure and learning culture, Mark Henderson stressed that the rapidity with which the technology has developed \u2014 along with the rise of its providers \u2014 cannot be overemphasized.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cIf you take Anthropic as an example, this is an outfit that didn\u2019t exist five years ago,\u201d he noted. \u201cThey now are looking at a trillion-dollar valuation right in the eye. You’re going to break a whole lot of eggs in achieving that kind of momentum, and they’ve not been able to hire to keep up with their growth.”<\/p>\n
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\n\tWhat\u2019s great for the rapid expansion of San Francisco-based Anthropic, however, is not always the best for its clients, including Pitt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re having troubled in communications. We talk about the left hand and the right hand not knowing what\u2019s going on? The first digit and the second digit don’t know what’s going on at Anthropic. And that plays out almost by the day,\u201d said Henderson, Pitt\u2019s senior vice chancellor and chief information officer. \u201cWe’ve had instances where they said we’re going to do this, and then we go to bed breathing a sigh of relief. (The next day) we find that that’s been undone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cIt’s a challenging but exciting environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tHenderson, along with Victoria Lancaster, executive director of AI Service Delivery at Pitt Digital, addressed Faculty Assembly at its Oct. 7 meeting held in Posvar Hall on the University\u2019s adoption and strategic implementation of AI and its related tools and software. Pitt is negotiating a contract renewal with Anthropic, known best for its Claude model, while also working with exploratory or “frontier” agencies as well as assistive services\u00a0like AI Connect. Pitt Digital also offers options including Google Gemini, CoPilot (as a premium service), and Microsoft Chat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cWe are currently in negotiations with Anthropic, looking at that contract that we have,\u201d Lancaster explained, noting it\u2019s \u201creally interesting\u201d to work with o. \u201cWe are talking to executive leadership and talking to Anthropic about what is it going to look like for us to renew with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cWhat is it going to cost us? What are they going to offer to us? And is it going to be a safe and accepted technology?\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tSince joining Pitt Digital in recent months, one thing Lancaster\u2019s charged with is how AI can be delivered safely to the various facets of the Pitt community. Safe handling of the technology, she emphasized, is her \u201cnorth star.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cI’m a huge proponent of administrative artificial intelligence, and I really like it. I want people to have access to the tools, and I don’t want to be an impediment to them, but I really want it to be safe,\u201d she noted. \u201cThat’s the thing that we’re working really hard on at Pitt Digital, to make those negotiations and try to understand what’s out there and try to give the best resources we can to the University with help from executive leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tEchoing Henderson\u2019s assessment, Lancaster said elements of the AI universe \u201care literally changing every day \u2026 New models are coming out. Things are happening, and we are constantly keeping an eye on what’s happening at the higher education level and how we can support that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tKeeping options open<\/p>\n
\n\tAlthough Henderson described Anthropic as early \u201cout of the gate\u201d and the first to focus on enterprise level AI technologies with its Claude platform, Pitt Digital is \u201cwatching very closely\u201d as all the so-called \u201cfrontier labs\u201d are approaching parity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cThere will be some that specialize, in Anthropic\u2019s case, and some scientific applications that we want to use the very best for the challenge at hand,\u201d he said, but multiple tools always will be available. He added that there’s \u201cnothing new about AI. It’s been around for a long time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cWhat’s new is that computing horsepower and internet speed and availability of data has allowed AI to reach what had been forecasted (in the 1970s) … It’s a challenging time now.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tHenderson explained that Anthropic\u2019s price advantage proved appealing when Pitt signed a one-year deal, along with the University\u2019s longtime partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which\u00a0worked with Pitt Digital and Anthropic to help bring Claude to Pitt.<\/p>\n
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With the improvements all AI labs have made, some may be better than others in specific areas but are approaching parity, he noted. “(We are) re-upping with Anthropic, assuming that we get to a reasonable position with them \u2026 As we all know, they are planning to (take the company) public.” All of the labs are having problems “proving a\u00a0return on the trillions of dollars invested in them.”<\/p>\n
\n\t“Our legal team is involved, my team is involved, others are involved, really looking at the whole package,” he added. “There may come a time where other tools will become much more attractive, particularly from a cost perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tSafety is No. 1\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tResponding to a question about \u201cpersonalized\u201d AI agents such as Muse by Meta and ChatGPT\u2019s Instinct platforms, Henderson said Pitt Digital is \u201cpaying very close attention to all developments. We experiment with a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tHe added that he\u2019s \u201cpretty firm\u201d that whatever company or tool adopted at Pitt \u201chas to be safe, and just because it’s out there and it’s available doesn’t make it safe. It has the potential to exponentially be dangerous to our environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cAll of these things have to go through a security review.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\tThe focus is on a single entity because \u201cwe cannot secure the homeland if everything is available in our environment \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere are some folks in in our community who bring in their own (AI program) and load it on their devices, and I’m here to tell you that is a horrible idea,\u201d Henderson stressed. \u201cEverything you put into these systems, it is out there forever and available to anyone who happens to come across it in their prompts.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cI know that the temptation is great because these things are changing so swiftly, and things in the news are hitting the marketplace almost hourly in some respects. Please don’t give in to temptation, because the downside is monumental.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tVictoria Lancaster mentioned non-frontier AI models that are \u201cwidely secure and really good,\u201d such as Copilot and Google. \u201cTalk about parity. They are coming up fast to the frontier models, and they have security to them. We have good contracts, especially (with) Microsoft. We have a deep relationship with them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\tWhat keeps her up at night regarding all this, she confessed, is \u201creally the security issue of using a frontier model or a beta model in with your private data or private research, especially if you don’t understand AI hygiene,\u201d she said. \u201cEven if you toggle (to) \u2018Do not train the LLM,\u201d it doesn’t stop it. We are a contained environment which can protect your data.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tShe also emphasized the importance of ethical use of tools, regardless which supplier company works with Pitt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cI keep reminding myself, \u2018We’re not any different from any people. Professors aren’t inherently more ethical than any other people,\u2019\u201d Lancaster said. \u201cSo, how should we be thinking about kind of reining in, not only the unsafe uses but the potentially really unethical uses?\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tHenderson said those considerations \u201cfactored largely\u201d into Pitt\u2019s decision to work with Anthropic.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cThey had a constitution as to how they’re going about doing their development and were formed by a group of folks who broke off from OpenAI because of questionable ethics in the development of their models \u2026 We started our AI journey really with safety first, so we began by creating appropriate guidelines in the use of AI technologies,\u201d he added. \u201cBecause it\u2019s moving so quicky \u2026 we try to update them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tResponding to a question about faculty members buying their own programs when what\u2019s available doesn\u2019t jibe with their needs, Lancaster said she wants faculty to have the best tool available, \u201cbut it has to be the safest.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tThe original arrangement with Anthropic was thought to include \u201ca little bit more of a secure environment, and it turned out they had a little change in some things, and so we had locked everything down,\u201d she noted. \u201cAs we’re negotiating with Anthropic, we are looking at a much broader portfolio.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\tShe noted the availability of AI Connect, which makes 24 AI coding tools available. \u201cIf you really want something (for) advanced calculations, we have something for that \u2026 (Also) Microsoft Copilot is coming out with more advanced tools, too, that are safe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cWe know that you guys need different tools and better tools,\u201d Lancaster added. \u201cWe’re just trying to get it safely to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tRegarding sustainability and the University\u2019s environmental impact from AI use, Henderson said Pitt \u201cprobably burn(s) more fossil fuels (or is) less compliant to sustainability through the use of YouTube.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cOur use of AI right now \u2014 the massive consumption of power and water and land and building these hyperscale facilities \u2014 is almost completely the domain of training the (LLMs) \u2026 We do not do that work at (Pitt), so I can’t give you a hard number in terms of our compliance. I would say that we are likely compliant \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tHenderson emphasized that Pitt Digital has endeavored to \u201ccommunicate with the community as much as we possibly can in a timely fashion around these changes or developments.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tBecause of the possibility of not reaching a renegotiation point, Pitt extended the contract deadline with Anthropic from September to December.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cWe continue working very hard, and it’s our intention to re-up. But there’s a window now until December that if, heaven forbid, we cannot get to a good place with them for any number of reasons \u2026 there’s time to react and time to think about change management, which was one thing that was very important to us \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cWe will work with the community alone,\u201d he said, \u201cand be very transparent as this continues to unfold.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\tShannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.<\/p>\n
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