The University of Mississippi is one of the 15 member institutions of OpenAI’s NextGenAI initiative.
The initiative, which will provide a total of $50 million in research grant money and artificial intelligence materials to member institutions, has a goal of “using AI to accelerate research breakthroughs and transform education,” according to OpenAI.
The American artificial intelligence company operates ChatGPT, a large language model chatbot.
UM is one of only three universities from the Southeastern Conference chosen by OpenAI, alongside the University of Georgia and Texas A&M University.
Other institutions include the California Institute of Technology, the California State University system, Duke University, Harvard University, Howard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Oxford, The Ohio State University, the Paris Institute of Political Sciences (Sciences Po). The Boston Children’s Hospital, the Boston Public Library and OpenAI are also members of the initiative.
Wes Jennings, co-director of the university’s National Center for Narrative Intelligence and UM criminal justice professor, played a key role in both attracting attention from OpenAI and securing the partnership.
“They reached out to us, which means that we’re already on the map, so to speak, nationally, in doing AI forward thinking research,” Jennings said. “We’ve embraced the technology and the evolution of tools because we wanted to be out there on the forefront of it, so, that way, we could be on the ground level for this partnership.”
Two of the programs involved in this research are the UM Institute of Data Science, which studies machine learning and data science, and the UM Center for Practical Ethics, which discusses the ethical uses of AI.
In 2024, the Center for Practical Ethics received a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to create a model for AI ethics education, partnering with Texas A&M University and Virginia Tech University.
The university initially received $50,000 from the initiative, but OpenAI did not put major restrictions on how the funding should be used.
“OpenAI didn’t dictate, per se, how the money needed to be spent. It could be used differently at different institutions,” Jennings said. “We’re going to be having a call for proposals that’s going to go out in the next few months for all faculty, staff and students that are interested in doing a research project related to AI utilizing OpenAI’s platforms.”
Jennings commented on the importance of equipping students with AI skills.
“In terms of my role and my vision on some of these things, education and training on AI tools is crucial for workforce development,” Jennings said. “If you have five people with the same degrees, applying for the same job and four of them say they have a credential in the application of AI tools, the person that doesn’t is going to be at a disadvantage there.”
The 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report, a survey released by Microsoft and LinkedIn, found that 66% of employers said they would not hire someone lacking AI skills.
Jennings encouraged people not to be afraid of AI replacing them in the workplace because human intelligence is still invaluable.
“We’re taking the stance that we don’t want people to shy away from (AI), but we don’t want them to go all in and ignore the fact that you still need human intelligence,” Jennings said. “You still need subject matter expertise.”
Rather than fearing AI, Jennings said, people should learn to use AI to help them work efficiently.
“We’re hoping that this will really be something that gets people energized and excited with ideas of how they can use (AI) effectively, to build efficiencies and research, to collect larger amounts of data in a much shorter time period than they can be done by hand,” Jennings said.
Jennings emphasized that AI is still a new technology that is continuing to change and progress.
“(AI models) are still learning, and there’s only going to be more improvement in the models as more of us humans participate in the interaction with them,” Jennings said. “It’s really kind of cool to be a part of something at this stage that’s still pretty new for society.”
