While students are starting to prepare and study the finals, which start in less than two weeks, they now have access to premium AI tools directly via their accounts by Notre Dame Google. On March 18, the information technology office sent an email to the campus level announcing students’ access to Google AI tools Gemini And Notebook.
Gemini is the large language model (LLM) by Google, a generative resource similar to Chatgpt. Notebooklm, on the other hand, works directly with user documents, providing summaries and acting as a research assistant.
In her message to students, the vice-president of information technology and information director Jane Livingston highlighted the advantages of these tools compared to the wide range of others on the market.
“When it is accessible via your Notre Dame account, the two services offer the same data protection as Google Drive, which means that your data is never sold, shared or used to form future models of AI,” she wrote.
When searching for how to deploy AI tools across the university, the Office of Information Technology (ILO) has largely focused on confidentiality. Google’s data protection policy was originally limited to students Google Drive accounts, but the technology giant proposed to extend this protection to the use of AI without additional license costs.
“We do the same type of reasonable diligence all the time. Each time we buy software, we want to make sure they use our data in a responsible manner,” said Brandon Rich, director of the AI activation team. “But AI is a little different, because we know they want the data not only to sell to sell or market to people, but to train models. We never want it to happen with the private data of Notre Dame.”
The Notre Dame Activation of AI was formed after the Notre Dame AI working group has published a report last spring. According to their Web pageThe working group “is actively associated with groups through the campus to advance the literacy of AI, promote responsible innovation and provide fundamental AI technology services to support the strategic mission of the university.”
Notre Dame students and teachers already have access to Google applications, such as the University interrupted To become a Google campus in 2013. AI tools are already integrated into these applications. By typing the symbol @ in the gemini cat box, students can interact directly with the application they need.
“The possibility of chatting with your Gmail, to chat with your calendar,” hey, when is my next meeting? Help me find this doc that I know somewhere in my reader, “it was really cool,” said Rich.
Given the existing Google relationship with the university, the addition of their AI services was more logical to rich than finding another partner. But Gemini have not always been an intriguing service for him, often surpassed by other high quality LLMs.
“A year ago, I would not have found [Gemini] Very interesting, “said Rich.” What I was really impressed by Google was how they updated and improved the service. “”
As Google stretched out with their offer, Gemini could compete with generative AI leaders. Given the big leap of quality, Rich said he was delighted that students have access to the model.
“They had just published their 1.5 model, which worked, perhaps not quite at the level of what Chatgpt was doing at the time, but still quite well,” said Rich. “Gemini 1.0, Gemini 2.0 was fine, but it was obviously not as good as the Chatgpt version. With significant improvements in the last model, Gemini 2.5 experimental, I am almost sure that he is there to beat everyone in the rankings.”
With all the capabilities that powerful LLMS provide, the decision to open access to Gemini and to notebooklm has not been taken lightly. Although the real deployment requires only the reversal of a digital switch on an administrative panel, the planning process has gone from the ILO to the provost office, to the student government and beyond.
“This is an AI tool that we provide students in a climate where there are legitimate concerns about academic integrity and what AI does to transform the experience into class, for good and perhaps not so good,” said Rich.
Ardea Russo, director of the Academic Standard Office, was one of the people who played an important role in discussions on Gemini. She noted that university policy on the use of AI in class is rather wide, leaving individual teachers.
“Obviously, a writing and rhetorical teacher will have different ideas for what is appropriate for a computer teacher,” said Russo. “The only thing is that you cannot transform any work like yours produced by AI, and you cannot use AI to finish your lessons unless the teacher tells you.”
She shared that one of the main advantages of opening access to Gemini and the notebooklm is that he puts all the students on a playground.
However, it has noted, because AI has become more widely available in the past two and a half years, violations of the code of honor have also increased. About 35% of all violations of the Honor Code are linked to AI.
“My first reaction was to be very nervous at the idea of providing AI,” said Russo. “”[But] It is not as if the students did not use it before. »»
The deployment of Gemini came with a major ILO communication effort and other offices to make university policies about the clearer AI and to inform students about how to use AI safely and responsible. However, Russo says there is still work to do.
“Ideally, most teachers will say what they want students to do,” she said. “I feel worried that there is still too much mystery, and I want the teachers to be really clear. I would like teachers to have more specific policies or were more precise about their policy. ”
While Gemini is now accessible to all students, Rich recognizes that not everyone will change. He said one of his objectives for the future is to continue to push university policy to follow the point of AI innovation. The faculty and the staff had access to Gemini a little earlier than the students, which could be repeated as other enterprises to associate with the university.
“For staff and teachers, we deploy the possibility of paying in a Chatgpt business version, which will give us the possibility of having the same data protection [as with Google’s tools]But on this platform, “he said.” Google fills this gap in some respects, but Chatgpt is still a huge leader in space. “”
