- 2024-11-06
Confronted with the reality of AI-interfaced knowledge, the University can respond in at least two ways.
One treats itself as a "owner" of knowledge, with its researchers-- its workers-- as the generators of said knowledge. Knowledge is farmed from "employees." The owner, the university, then create a knowledge base of their own to trade and train. This is the way academic for-profit publishers have taken. The problem with this position is not just about the violation of [copyright] work (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02599-9), it's about losing sight of the mission of the university and the very point of academia.
The other response centers itself on humanity: the humans it is housing, protecting, and nurturing to further human knowledge and understanding and the humans that need the university to exist for such purposes. Focusing on the human, the university considers how or why it can engage with AI models to enable its humans and the humans that need it to be, live, and create better in its grand mission.