ChatGPT quickly became unavoidable in higher education after its release in 2022. While the artificial intelligence chatbot can be a valuable tool on college campuses, it also raises serious concerns – such as widespread student cheating and data privacy issues. Now, the developer behind this technology, OpenAI, is about to release “ChatGPT Edu” – a new version that is specifically aimed at higher education. While this new AI tool may benefit students, faculty, researchers, and campus operations, there are important considerations to keep in mind. We’ll explain everything you should know and cover the top considerations for deciding if ChatGPT Edu might be right for your school.

What Is ChatGPT Edu?

OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Edu on May 30, describing it as “a version of ChatGPT built for universities to responsibly deploy AI to students, faculty, researchers, and campus operations.” Both ChatGPT and this latest version are chatbots and forms of generative AI, but ChatGPT Edu can further be categorized as “enterprise AI” since it integrates advanced AI technologies within large organizations – such as universities.

ChatGPT Edu, which is expected to start rolling out this summer, builds on the positive impacts its predecessor has made (or has the potential to make) in higher education. This includes capabilities related to personalized tutoring, student resume review, help with grant applications, and assisting faculty with grading and feedback. The new product follows success stories at some top universities that have used ChatGPT Enterprise, a subscription-based plan launched in August 2023.

Potential Benefits of ChatGPT Edu

While only limited information on ChatGPT Edu is currently available, it could have potential benefits for your educational institution.

Better Technology

ChatGPT Edu provides access to GTP-4o (the latest version of ChatGPT), advanced capabilities (such as data analytics, web browsing, and document summarization), improved language capabilities, significantly higher message limits in comparison to the free version of ChatGPT, and the ability to build custom versions of ChatGPT and share them within university workspaces.

Stronger Protection

A top concern with AI use on campus is the protection of student privacy, data security, and trade secrets. Because publicly available AI systems gather data from various public sources, conventional wisdom is that AI users should assume that any data or queries they enter into AI systems will become public information. While that remains sound advice, ChatGPT Edu might help address some of these concerns based on its promises of robust security, data privacy, administrative controls, and the promise that conversations and data will not be used to train OpenAI models.

Greater Controls

While ChatGPT 4 and ChatGPT Edu generally were trained on the same, vast corpus of text data,  ChatGPT Edu was fine-tuned with additional educational content, including textbooks, academic papers, educational websites, lesson plans, and other educational resources. This fine-tuning process makes ChatGPT Edu more adept at understanding and creating educational content. This process also allows for stricter content filtering mechanisms that help ensure that the information generated is appropriate for an educational environment.

Personalization of the Education Experience

ChatGPT Edu is designed to respond to individual queries and using it can personalize the educational process. The more the product is used, the more it will learn how different students like to learn and how they learn best. This will help researchers and developers build applications that act like personalized tutors for students of all ages.

Top Considerations for Deciding if ChatGPT Edu Is Right for Your School

Though ChatGPT Edu has strong potential, there are important considerations to keep in mind before adopting any new AI program. You must understand the risks and make sure the use of generative AI on your campus is appropriate, beneficial, and compliant with all relevant laws.

More Information Is Needed

As of now, the information available about ChatGPT Edu and how it operates is limited. Any analysis on its adoption and potential uses will require careful, informed review. In addition to fully understanding how the technology operates and how new systems would integrate with current systems, you will need to carefully review the contractual terms with the vendor. Other questions might include:

• What party assumes liability for compliance with local and federal laws?
• Do vendors have access to university data, and if so, what protections are in place?
• What data was trained to build the LLM model?
• What model was specifically chosen and why?
• What testing has been done on the model? 
• Can the vendor explain why specific inputs resulted in the specific outputs?

The right review team should include technology experts to help evaluate the security protocols and understand how university data is collected, maintained, and handled. Technology experts can help investigate the risks of the technology “hallucinating” and giving inaccurate results, which has been a problem with some publicly available AI systems. We previously covered the pros and cons of using ChatGPT in schools and three caveats for employers to keep in mind as this technology continues to develop.

Consider Your Higher Ed Workplace Policy

You should also review your internal policies on AI use to make sure the new technology is used in compliance with university standards and expectations. We previously covered 10 things employers must include in any workplace AI policy and five things higher education needs to consider when crafting AI workplace policies.

Avoid AI Bias in Admission Decisions

While using AI to filter voluminous college admissions applications sounds appealing, generally universities should pump the brakes on ideas for using AI to support screening in admissions.  Many AI tools have been shown to be prone to discrimination, which is a concern if they are used as a selection tool.

Also, legislatures have expressed concern about “algorithmic discrimination” – which occurs when the use of AI systems results in unlawful differential treatment or impact disfavoring certain individuals or groups based on protected classifications (for example: age, disability, race, religion, or sex). Last month, for instance, Colorado’s governor signed a landmark AI discrimination bill into law. New laws could impact how AI is used in college admissions, so stay tuned for updates.