AI at Macalester College

Generative AI is a topic that affects all areas of campus and impacts how we teach, learn, fundraise, and manage our daily responsibilities. Macalester is dedicated educating our community about the opportunities and pitfalls that come along with such impactful technological advancements.

General Guidelines

Protect Your Data

You should not enter any non-public data, specifically anything that includes non-public research data, into publicly available generative AI tools. Information shared with generative AI tools using default settings is not private and could expose proprietary or sensitive information to unauthorized parties.
Follow the AI Policy Guidelines for Faculty and Staff when using Generative AI tools, software, and data.

Review Content

 AI-generated material can be inaccurate, misleading. It may also “hallucinate” fictional information. Be sure to throughly review any AI generated materials for copyrighted information, bias and private information. You are responsible for any content that you produce or publish that includes AI-generated material. You may also want to mention or cite uses of AI generated material.

Be Alert

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if a message is legitimate or not. Generative AI has made it harder. Review How to spot an email phishing scam in our TopDesk Knowledge Base. If you receive a message that looks suspicious, just forward the message in question to the ITS Help Desk at [email protected]. We’ll let you know if it’s a scam or not. If the messages is a scam, we’ll block the sender.

Remember, AI accounts (and many other accounts as well) may be collecting, using, and sharing not only the information you input as prompts, but also identity, location, and contact data; chatbot interactions, or information about your computer. All public data on the internet can be used to train Large Language Models (LLMs) that make up the knowledge base of Generative AI applications.

Generative AI tools on Campus

You may hear about certain features that are part of Gemini, CoPilot or other tools that you cannot access. Not all of these tools are part of our paid account or have been vetted for security.

Supported Tools and Add-ons

• NotebookLM is available with your Macalester Google account. It can help summarize facts, find connections, and brainstorm ideas with a selected set of notes, websites, articles, or videos. NotebookLM only uses the source material that you’ve chosen to upload, and is not visible to other users or used to train their AI models.
• Zoom Transcription will create a full transcription of your recorded Zoom meeting.
• Zoom Translation will auto-generate captions in a variety of languages in real time.
• Adobe Express can help create flyers and social media content. Their AI tool will help you easily remove backgrounds and objects, or perform other quick edits. To access Adobe Express, fill out the  Adobe Creative Cloud License Request form.

Please reach out to ITS if you have questions. There are several privacy issues to consider before initiating an AI tool or plug in for a software you already use.

Teaching and Learning

To learn more about the impact on teaching and learning with AI, visit AI Literacy and Critical Thinking, a Macalester resource created by the AI Literacy Working Group and actively maintained by the DeWitt Wallace Library.

Glossary

Artificial Intelligence	Technology that aims to simulate human learning , decision making, and problem solving.
Bias (in Gen AI)	The presence of systematic and undesired preferences or imbalances in the output generated by an AI model. Bias can emerge in various forms, such as in the content, language, or perspectives generated by the AI system.
Chatbot	A computer program designed to simulate human conversation.
Closed Model	Advanced AI models trained on controlled data sets.
Deep  Learning	A form of artificial intelligence that trains computers to process computers like the human brain.
Generative Model	An AI model designed to generate new data that resembles the patterns and characteristics of the training data it has been exposed to.
GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer)	A type of machine learning algorithm that uses deep learning and a large database of training text in order to generate new text in response to a user’s prompt.
Hallucinations	Made-up information based on a pattern that the AI model has learned as part of its training. The model could create references that do not actually exist.
Large Language Model (LLM)	Advanced AI models trained on massive datasets to generate text in a wide range of contexts.
Machine Learning	Computer systems with the ability to learn from data without being programmed for a specific outcome.
Natural Language Processing (NLP)	A branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on enabling computers to understand and process human language.
Open Model	An open model is freely available, you are free to publish its outputs, and it can be used anywhere provided you adhere to its licensing terms.
Prompt	The input or instructions given to a model to generate new content based on that starting point. It provides context and guides the model’s output. The prompt can be a few words or sentences that set the tone or specify the desired content.
Prompt Engineering	Constructing effective language prompts to generate a relevant response.