CSU Announces Landmark Initiative to Become Nation’s First and Largest AI-Empowered University System
“Today, the California State University (CSU), the largest and most diverse public four-year university in the country, announced a first-of-its-kind public-private initiative with some of the world’s leading tech companies, including Adobe, Alphabet (Google), AWS, IBM, Instructure, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI, and the Office of California Governor Gavin Newsom that will leverage the power of artificial intelligence to create an AI-empowered higher education system that could surpass any existing model in both scale and impact.
The CSU’s unprecedented adoption of AI technologies will make trainings, learning, and teaching tools—including ChatGPT—available across all 23 CSU universities, ensuring that the system’s more than 460,000 students and 63,000 faculty and staff have equitable access to cutting-edge tools that will prepare them to meet the rapidly changing education and workforce needs of California. The CSU expects to make these tools available within the next few weeks.
“We are proud to announce this innovative, highly collaborative public-private initiative that will position the CSU as a global leader among higher education systems in the impactful, responsible and equitable adoption of artificial intelligence,” said CSU Chancellor Mildred García. “The comprehensive strategy will elevate our students’ educational experience across all fields of study, empower our faculty’s teaching and research, and help provide the highly educated workforce that will drive California’s future AI-driven economy.”
The CSU’s contribution to California’s workforce and economy underscores its vital role in shaping the state’s future as the CSU awards nearly half of the state’s bachelor’s degrees, and helps create more than 209,000 jobs annually, and one in 10 employees in California is a CSU alum. But while over 30 of the top 50 AI firms in the world are based in California, over 50% of the AI workforce in the United States is international. The CSU is taking a bold step to develop the AI workforce for California.”