By james art UC Irvine made its mark on the continued evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) when it released its AI generation tool, ZotGPT, to faculty in December 2023 and to students in April 2024. To raise awareness of ZotGPT among students, the Hub is partnering with the Office of Information Technology (OIT) AI team to host a Let’s Taco-bout ZotGPT event at the ANTrepreneur Center on October 15.
Rows of light green rolling chairs, large windows offering natural light and a patio with free tacos set the scene for the 5 p.m. event. Xanath Hernandez, director of communications in the Office of Data and Information Technology, introduced the developers of the AI Team: Sarkis Daglian, director of AI, cloud and client solutions, and Chris Price, principal engineer and architect of AI.
“There’s a malicious rumor going around… about your data being passed on to your professors… No, that’s not happening,” Daglian said, opening his presentation.
He then outlined a roadmap for ZotGPT’s future, including the upcoming launch of ClassChat, a “junior assistant” for instructors and professors that is set to debut later this month.
“An instructor can take any of the class artifacts—readings, lectures—and upload them to ZotGPT ClassChat. And then they can create prompts against those modules,” Daglian told New University. “So if they want to create an exercise or an assignment against specific smaller pieces of data that they’ve given it.”
After the presentation, Daglian gave a demonstration of ZotGPT, inviting students to create a cover letter using the technology. He showed how AI can simplify or improve the letter with prompts such as “simplify the letter; it’s too long’ or ‘add specific examples’, guiding the group towards a more structured output.
While addressing privacy issues during a question-and-answer session, Daglian and Price explained to the students that legally binding privacy policies are in place and a user can simply delete their chat history “if [they’re] extra paranoid with people [they] I don’t want to see it.
In developing ZotGPT, the AI team created policies that address privacy concerns, which can be viewed on the ZotGPT website.
“We have certain privacy and security controls in place so that anything you put into ZotGPT chat doesn’t go out into the larger Internet ecosystem,” Daglian told New University. “So when it comes to privacy, if there are things you don’t want to go out, then using ZotGPT chat would be the most private and secure option.”
While Daglian and Price emphasized privacy controls and ZotGPT as the more personal and secure AI option, third-year business administration student Artur Fedrizci expressed that he is not concerned about what companies do with his data, but instead appreciates the use of its personalized content data.
“Would you allow this app to track you? And I say yes because it gives me ads for things I actually want. I’ve also worked in marketing, so I like to learn and stay up to date with what the industry is doing, and the algorithm will only push for those fun things. And so I don’t care that ZotGPT doesn’t sell my data,” Fedreizci told New University. “So it doesn’t matter to me.”
Although not explicitly asked, the students’ questions reflected a broader discourse about academic dishonesty and AI. According to The Washington Post, professors and instructors were alarmed as the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT posed challenges to academic integrity when students began submitting AI-generated answers to assignments.
Daglian acknowledged those concerns and said he would “never advocate for students to copy and paste” what the AI generates; instead, he encouraged others to think of AI as a tool and helper in one’s work.
“It’s like we have to accept that AI is out there and students are using it,” Daglian said. “Second, the tools that served as AI detectors like Turnitin.com up to this point were unreliable. So I think when you look at the landscape of where technology is going, where everything in the world is going, and where higher education is going, not even higher education, but just education in general, I think there are responsible ways to use AI in the course of teaching and learning.”
In response to these challenges, some institutions have banned the use of AI. The UC system has taken steps to adapt by establishing overarching principles for its responsible use. However, policies may vary by professor.
“It depends on who you talk to,” Daglian said of students’ use of AI in courses.
Some students like Anthony Ann and Darshan Golcha, both computer engineering students, believe that ZotGPT is a useful tool for their courses.
“I find it helpful when I’m trying to learn coursework in my classes. It’s not just doing the work for me; rather, it helps me navigate something I might not know or conduct research faster,” Ann told New University.
Like Ahn, Golchha saves time using ZotGPT when tracking back to his lectures.
“I always record some of my lectures and then I just use ZotGPT to generate summaries of them all the time,” Golcha told New University.
Ann heard about ZotGPT in April 2024. He was skeptical about how to properly use AI due to online rumors that the university would track student usage. Now he appreciates its affordability.
“I liked it because it gave me access to GPT-4, their free service, while [ChatGPT] I limited how many messages I could send,” Ann said. “And [ZotGPT] don’t do [put rate limits on users]so I just have infinite access to GPT-4.”
Price explained that OpenAI currently charges $20 per month for unlimited access to its latest model, Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4), while ZotGPT provides the same model to students and faculty for free and with no usage restrictions, “ democratizing access or choice for technology.”
“Money shouldn’t stop people from accessing technology as powerful as this,” Gary Arzumanian, a software developer on the OIT AI team, told New University. “The more we democratize the use of AI, the safer our data is by keeping it out of certain hands.”
Price, Arzumanian and Daglian agreed that UCI’s AI innovation is at the beginning of what will be a very impactful change. Going forward, Daglian encouraged students to embrace generative AI in the current evolving landscape.
“Generative AI will be a cornerstone skill in the job market, no matter what your major [or] what you hope to do after UCI,” Daiglain said. “You’ll have a competitive advantage if you’re familiar with using generative AI because you’ll be able to do things more efficiently and effectively.”
Jeong-Min Hwang is a Features Intern for the fall quarter of 2024. She can be reached at [email protected].
Edited by Kaelin Kwon, Sophia Feeney, Jahim Conley and Jacob Ramos.