Northeastern University joins AI-higher ed experiment
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Northeastern University partnered with the company behind Claude to test how AI can be incorporated into the college curriculum.
The big picture: Northeastern is among three colleges globally that will test Anthropic's new learning tool under Claude for Higher Education, which aims to help teach users instead of offering shortcuts to an answer.
Driving the news: All Northeastern students, faculty and staff will get access to the premier version of Claude, including the new "learning mode" that's central to Claude for Education.
- Instead of answering a prompt, Claude's "learning mode" asks users how they would answer a question and what proof they have to back it up.
- Northeastern will host workshops next week for students, faculty and staff who want to learn to use AI in their fields of study.
Anthropic also announced partnerships with the London School of Economics and Champlain College, VentureBeat reported.
By the numbers: Northeastern will give premier Claude access to nearly 49,000 students across its 13 campuses.
- Another 3,500 faculty and 4,900 staff members will also have access.
What they're saying: Javed Aslam, chief of AI at Northeastern, says the AI could help students create study guides, quizzes on course materials and other resources.
- He also wants professors to take advantage of the new technology.
- "Part of our mission as a university is to really rethink how it is that we do both teaching and learning in the presence of AI," Aslam tells Axios. "It's really on both those fronts."
Yes, but: That also means another 50,000 people may be using energy to generate text- or image-based responses, though it's still hard to tell exactly how much energy a session with an AI model typically uses.
Northeastern formed an AI working group that will analyze the best way to incorporate AI into the curriculum, which may also help inform how Claude for Education can improve higher education.
Zoom out: The partnership is the latest example of a college embracing AI.
- American University's Kogod School of Business is launching an Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence.
- The American Association of Colleges and Universities launched its own institute last year with 124 colleges participating, including Boston University, Berklee College of Music and Framingham State University.
The bottom line: AI will transform higher education as we know it, probably more than it has since the pandemic and the rise of platforms like TikTok.