From February 1, 2024, all students at DTU have the opportunity to use artificial intelligence, AI, in the form of the chat tool Copilot in DTU's IT universe. With Copilot, students will be able to freely use AI to solve tasks and, among other things, gain experience with source criticism when assessing language models' collection and dissemination of data.
"AI is here to stay, which is why DTU wants to ensure that there is a uniform offer for students throughout the university, and not just in programs with artificial intelligence. The academic environments are already working actively to bring AI into teaching, and we want to promote this development," says Lars D. Christoffersen, Dean of DTU.
In 2023, DTU decided to open for digital tools and AI such as ChatGPT in teaching and, in the longer term, also for exams. AI is currently used in several courses and in research at DTU, and by 2024, the new technologies can be expanded and used more systematically. The decision is part of DTU's mission to develop and utilize natural and technical science for the benefit of society and to provide the best engineering education in Europe.
Equal access to AI
Assistive technology and textbooks are usually paid for by the students themselves, but when it comes to AI, DTU finances the tool Copilot, in the same way that DTU today gives students equal access to the 'Office suite' for word processing. DTU has wanted to ensure that there is a basic AI tool so that teachers can organize teaching where it is possible to use AI.
"The students must learn how to use AI correctly, they must assess whether it is a relevant tool to use, and they must be critical of whether the information is correct. But the tool must be accessible so that there is a common foundation, and if some students want to purchase more advanced AI, more literature, or other programs, they can of course do so," says Lars D. Christoffersen.
DTU's AI tool is part of the IT solution the university buys from Microsoft. The AI tool Copilot is usually referred to as ChatGPT4, and the students get access to a so-called protected model where all searches and answers remain in DTU's cloud solution while working, so that neither internal nor external parties can harvest data and use it to train their AI models. This means that questions and answers in an AI chat session will be deleted once the session has ended. The protected model ensures, among other things, that searches made in DTU's IT system comply with the EU's data security rules, GDPR.
