In advance of the August 13 Town Hall Webinar, I submitted a question asking the University of Pittsburgh about what it would do to curb the use of generative artificial intelligence within the Pitt community.

On August 13, I tuned in to the webinar on Zoom to hear their response. They did not respond to my question, and did not indicate any way in which they planned to divest from AI at an institutional level, or to support Pitt faculty in eliminating its use.

However, on Monday, September 29, after about six weeks to prepare a response, I recieved the following email, replicated in full:

Dear Aliya,

Thank you again for your interest in how things are progressing on campus and beyond. The chancellor’s office asked our office to answer the question(s) that you submitted in response to the Pitt Town Hall Webinar.

The Responsible Data Science team has been talking about these topics with faculty, staff and former students, as well as with education consulting groups like EAB and regional employers from finance, health, manufacturing, operations and the public sector. The advice that we’ve received is that our learners will need to be able to responsibly use and lead teams and projects that include generative AI and other emerging technologies as resources. These partners do not see generative AI going away. Therefore, the best strategy for our students today as well as those who look to Pitt to help them upskill and reskill to attain their career goals is to teach them how:

• To critically think about when and how to engage with specific sets of generative AI tools
• To iterate and collaborate to calibrate the appropriate amount of confidence when exploring and innovating solutions with new technologies like generative AI
• To be accountable for decisions that involve generative AI and other data-fueled modeling approaches and be trustworthy through the qualitative evaluation and validation of outputs and inferences in the context in which they will inform decisions and affect human lives

Our challenge at this time and over the next decade at least is to evolve our teaching, research and outreach to prepare our students to thrive in an age of quickly changing emerging technology. The University is uniquely situated to meet this challenge with coordinated programs that leverage the combined strengths of not only our world-leading faculty but also community and industry partnerships across the region.

Please let us know if you have additional questions or concerns. We appreciate your partnership and engagement.

Sincerely, Office of the Provost

I believe this buzzword soup speaks for itself.