Campus brought its AI questions to the Office of Responsible AI town hall
More than 200 members of the University of Arizona community logged on as the Office of Responsible AI hosted its first town hall of the fall semester.
The session opened with brief updates on the university’s AI roadmap, then turned over the floor to attendees who shared their feedback, comments and questions.
During the opening remarks, David Ebert, the university's chief AI and data science officer and leader of ORAI, shared that the office's approach is deliberately community-driven, explaining that the word "responsible" reflects a focus on discerning when and how to use AI so the university can determine where it genuinely adds value.
The questions that followed touched nearly every corner of campus life: the tools people can use, the choices AI brings to teaching and learning, how to build new tools and keep them safe and AI fluency skills. The ORAI team emphasized that the roadmap is a “living, breathing document” and what the U of A community shares will shape its next version.
Tools and Access
Wolfgang Jentner, associate director of AI research applications, shared what tools are currently available for campus and what is in development; for example, the U of A GenAI platform, free to campus, offers access to different large language models, including Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s Gemma. A separate tool, AI Verde, also called AI for Classrooms, is available to instructors and lets them configure teams and workspaces for classroom use.
Additional tools are in the pipeline. The Arizona AI Assistant is an upcoming platform that will let users build and share their own AI assistants. Its first version will focus primarily on managing API keys for research and coding tools, providing a secure way to connect projects or software to large language models.
Jentner added that the office plans to extend the tool beyond managing API keys, toward shareable knowledge bases. It's a retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, approach, comparable to shared notebooks in tools like NotebookLM, so students and instructors can build and pass along custom assistants.
Other tools in development include the AI Discovery Lab, a secure, self-service space the university is building where people can create temporary work environments or sandboxes to experiment with AI and machine learning. Another is a version of U of A GenAI that meets federal health-privacy rules such as HIPAA so it can be used with sensitive data.
Innovation and Guardrails
To help the community build their own AI tools, ORAI is preparing plain-language quick sheets. These practical guides will walk people through common questions, such as when to disclose the use of AI and how student-privacy and public-records rules apply. They are being developed in partnership with the Office of General Counsel, the Privacy Office and the Graduate College.
In addition, Ebert mentioned that through the innovation pilots, the ORAI team collaborates closely with the University Information Technology Services to create safe, custom environments for teams attempting more complicated or ambitious workflows, such as agentic AI or enterprise integrations.
AI Fluency and Resources
The office established the AI Leadership Collaborative, a three-tier community of 48 faculty and staff leaders selected to serve as AI champions, fellows, and associate directors. Part of their role focuses on guiding how the university adopts and governs AI, identifying specific needs and bringing resources back to their units.
Beyond access, attendees also discussed fluency and whether people know how to use these tools well, not just where to find them. The first step, several argued, is agreeing on a shared definition and framework for AI literacy — one that could guide both how skills are built across disciplines and how they're assessed. Ebert noted the university has strong assessment experts who can help build surveys and measures and said the office intends to incorporate that work.
The team will review feedback gathered at the town hall and through the online form and fold it into the next version of the roadmap. The office plans a follow-up update at the AI Town Hall on Oct. 14–15, held in partnership with Amazon Web Services, with sessions featuring higher-education experts and campus innovators.
If you missed the session, a recording is available. Campus members can still provide feedback or share questions about the AI roadmap by submitting the feedback form.
Additional Resources