CU Boulder professors raise concerns over ChatGPT deal
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University of Colorado Boulder professors are raising questions about the school's contract with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT to all students.
Why it matters: The deal is fueling faculty unease about the ethics of artificial intelligence and its environmental impact and potential effects on student learning and mental health.
Catch up quick: CU announced a three-year agreement with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT Edu systemwide to anyone with a CU email.
- The system office will cover year one. After that, campuses will decide how many licenses to fund.
- Access is slated to roll out before the end of March.
Friction point: A group of CU Boulder professors convened last month to air objections to the contract and students' increased AI use.
- Lori Emerson, a media studies professor, said faculty felt they were not meaningfully consulted before the deal was finalized.
- She added that instructors need more time, training and funding to revamp teaching plans to accommodate AI.
- "We're on the front lines," Emerson said. "We are the ones who should have a central role in figuring out how to roll out these tools."
Between the lines: Faculty flagged risks tied to AI's environmental footprint, bias and hallucinations, and possible harms to student safety, privacy and mental health.
- Emerson called the OpenAI contract "especially problematic," pointing to the tech giant's Pentagon contract and new ChatGPT features.
The other side: CU spokesperson Michele Ames said that the university estimates roughly 30,000 students and staff already use ChatGPT — and that no digital platform is "risk free."
- "Adoption of generative AI is already occurring across CU at significant scale," Ames told us. "That created urgency around both equity in access as well as security."
The bottom line: Emerson said CU may be overstating how widely students use — or value — large language models.
- Still, she argued, the university should not accelerate adoption.
- "From my perspective, the impacts on teaching and learning are beyond significant; they have the potential to unsettle the entire purpose of higher education," Emerson said. "I know that sounds extreme, but I think it's true."
Disclosure: Axios and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI to access part of Axios' story archives while helping fund the launch of Axios into four local cities and providing some AI tools. Axios has editorial independence.