Yesterday afternoon, students at San Francisco State University were notified that they have access to ChatGPT Education, also known as ChatGPT Edu.
In a school-wide email announcing the launch of the new software, Information Technology said ChatGPT Edu is “a secure, AI-powered assistant specifically for higher education.”
ChatGPT Edu gives students access to a premium version of the ChatGPT software, GPT-4o. Improved features include advanced capabilities, such as enhanced language quality, speed and support for over 50 languages.
It also allows building GPTs, which are custom versions of ChatGPT. With higher message limits compared to the free version, it also includes advanced data analytics, web browsing and document summarization capabilities.
A significant feature different from the standard version of ChatGPT is that conversations and data held in ChatGPT Edu aren’t used to train the OpenAI model.
In February, the California State University system announced in a press release that it had signed an 18-month contract with OpenAI to become the first AI-empowered university system.
In the same release, Leah Belsky, the vice president and general manager of education at OpenAI, said AI is crucial to the future of education.
“It is critical that the entire ecosystem … work together to ensure that all students globally have access to AI and develop the skills to use it responsibly,” Belsky said.
Students and faculty have mixed reactions to the new software launch.
Ali Kashani, a political philosophy professor at SFSU, told Golden Gate Xpress in March that AI could do more harm than good.
“It doesn’t generate any original knowledge,” Kashani said. “Whatever knowledge is out there is human knowledge. Therefore, if there are any biases, it also goes into the system.”
The university will be hosting an introduction workshop about ChatGPT Edu on April 16 at 2 p.m. over Zoom.
Charles • Apr 22, 2025 at 3:00 pm
Yall we are so fucked
Boethius • Apr 17, 2025 at 6:06 pm
It’s called “de-skilling”– more or less what happened to African people when Europeans arrived on their shores bearing finished textiles. Within a few generations local traditions and expertise in weaving were largely gone.
With AI, on the other hand, students will be able to outsource their intellection to an algorithm. No more need to struggle through difficult passages of written text: just plug it into the app.
And why work through your own thoughts, why evolve your own ideas, when you can have a non-human mechanism perform this quintessentially human activity for you?
Studies have already indicated that fewer than half of US Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 are capable of reading at a 6th grade level. We are on the horizon of a vast dumbing-down of the population so that still more wealth can be stuffed into the pockets of billionaires and the university is complicit.