The time to draft AI policies has come. In just a few years, AI has deeply permeated our lives, especially education, placing us at a pivotal moment to write our near future.
We’re sitting in a room with 40 people. Similar gatherings are mirrored at LCC University, another at Bard College Berlin, a third at European Humanities University, at BISLA, and at Central European University. Five European universities are uniting under the AI Aware Universities project, organized by the Center for Information, Democracy, and Citizenship (CIDC) at AUBG. The project is funded by People Powered and will be finalized in April 2025.
“The rapid advancement of AI is reshaping education in multiple ways, yet most educational institutions lack a structured, ethical framework to navigate this rapid advancement,” said Dr. Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob, Executive Director of CIDC.
The goal is to bring together students, faculty, and staff to voice their opinions on the ethical use of AI in academic settings. Their dynamic discussions will form the basis for the first-ever policies on the use of AI at universities.
The value of the “top down” approach
The project adopts a rather different approach to policy drafting, ensuring all students, faculty, and staff – those most affected by these guidelines – are actively involved in the discussions, the drafting, the creation, and the review.
“While many universities implement policies from the ‘top down,’ we are happy to have implemented this project using deliberative democracy, based on student-led discussion groups that involve people from all parts of the university,” said Matthew Whoolery, Professor of Psychology at AUBG and AI Aware workshops facilitator.
“Naturally, we realized that the students tend to have limited influence in shaping the university’s responses to this issue,” added Vlada Kolesnikova, Project Coordinator at CIDC.
With the introduction of GenAI, the need for a more comprehensive approach that involves all stakeholders has arisen. As Dr. Jacob noted, “A complete ban on GenAI in academia overlooks its potential benefits and creates enforcement challenges. Conversely, unregulated use raises concerns about academic integrity, bias, and equal opportunity.”
“This project was born out of the need to develop an ethical, participatory, and community-driven strategy for AI use in universities,” added Dr. Jacob.
During each session, the four groups engage in active discussions on topics such as the ethical use of AI in assignments and grading, the student-professor ‘contract’, and the need for AI literacy training.
“Our main goal in designing the workshops was to create a space for open discussions about GenAI and its impact on the AUBG community. We prioritized interactive group discussions, as we wanted participants to actively exchange ideas and share how the emergence of GenAI tools has affected them,” said Vlada Kolesnikova.
Knowledge-sharing through workshops
The project’s first two workshops featured lectures by expert guest speakers in the field of AI development and its academic applications. They represented distinct viewpoints to provide a balanced approach and prompt students to engage in discussions.
The first lecture, delivered by Zachary Hutchinson, currently a Professor at the University of Maine and soon to join AUBG’s Computer Science department, centered around the technological aspects of AI and its limitations. It provided a critical view of the use of AI in education.
In the second workshop, Brett Anders, Professor and researcher at the American University in Armenia, discussed the growing need for AI literacy training as a way to ensure the ethical use of AI and prepare students for future careers.
What’s to come?
With the AI Aware project underway, policy-making is in progress. Based on the group discussions, student assistants will draft the initial policy. It will be run by the Dean of Faculty and several faculty members before presenting it back to the groups for final review. This will lead to AUBG’s first-ever policy on AI use.
“By involving student facilitators, we ensured that the students were not merely participants in the project, but they also acted as key drivers. Our student facilitators will play a central role in drafting a set of the recommendations gathered from the discussion groups,” said Vlada Kolesnikova.
The other participating universities will follow the same template to create their own policies.
Dr. Jacob concluded: “This project has the potential to scale beyond the participating universities. Our ultimate goal is to develop a comprehensive set of ethical guidelines that can be adopted to govern AI usage in academic settings.
“These recommendations will be grounded in the real experiences and concerns of university communities, in a way that is practical, fair, and adaptable across different disciplines and contexts,” he added.
