Morgan State could one day run entirely on AI

Grading assignments. Advising students. Sorting through important files.

These tasks, and countless more, might not have to be done by employees at Morgan State University anymore.

That’s thanks to Obsidian, a new secure artificial intelligence system created by leaders at the Northeast Baltimore university.

“The university will learn from itself,” said Timothy Summers, Morgan State’s vice president for information technology and chief information officer. “It’ll adapt in real time and make smarter decisions at every level.”

The historically Black college, Summers and experts said, is one of the few universities in the country, perhaps even the world, that has its own sovereign AI, meaning it’s created domestically by Morgan State engineers.

The university’s embrace of AI comes as some academics are sounding alarms about the models, arguing they erode academic achievement and honesty. But Summers insists that Morgan State is prioritizing equity and training staff to avoid those challenges.

Other Maryland colleges, notably the Johns Hopkins University, are also rushing to usher in the new age of AI. Hopkins is both creating its own AI institute, much to the chagrin of Remington residents, as well as licensing its authors’ books to train AI models. The University of Maryland, College Park recently opened its own AI Hub, boasting over 200 faculty members who study and teach about the systems.

At Morgan State, Obsidian should help the university run more efficiently and save money, though Summers noted that his engineers are not creating the program to replace any employees.

“Every hour this saves is an hour we will reinvest into our students,” he said.

Employees spend precious time, Summers said, trying to answer simple questions, like which of their students is at risk of not graduating. Instead of combing through several files, they will soon be able to ask Obsidian the question and get an answer immediately, he said. The idea is for the system to eventually reach every department at Morgan State, from academic units to athletics and admissions. The university is still working on implementing the project, which Summers noted is still in its “early stages.”

The project has been bolstered by a new $63 million gift from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.

David Wilson, the university’s president, told The Banner that some of Scott’s record-breaking gift will be used to fund Obsidian and other aspects of Morgan State’s AI push.

“We don’t want to be bystanders here at Morgan, and we don’t want our community to be left behind,” Wilson said. “Morgan will become a complete smart campus.”

Wilson said one of the motivations for the system is that it will allow students to be “innovators of the future.”

That’s especially important now. Research shows that around 85% of college students have used AI academically. Nearly three-quarters of college students say their usage has increased in the last year.

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Summers, who has spent years working with AI, said that Morgan State’s approach to Obsidian is unique compared to other universities.

“Most institutions are adding AI on top of legacy systems,” he explained. “But at Morgan, we’re doing it a bit differently: We’re rebuilding the system around the artificial intelligence itself.”

Hal Daume, a professor at the University of Maryland College Park who has been studying AI for decades, said there was a “huge advantage” for an organization to build its own system.

“You know what’s happening with the data,” Daume said. “When things go inevitably haywire, you have a lot more control over how to fix it.”

Morgan State’s project, he said, sounded like a “complete overhaul,” which is unusual.

One aspect of Obsidian involves creating the university’s very own ChatGPT-style platform, which is unusual in higher education, an industry seeing growing alarm over students using bots like ChatGPT to complete assignments and write essays. Like ChatGPT, Morgan State’s program will generate human-like and accurate responses to questions and prompts that users submit, Summers said.

The university’s AI will also create a ledger which Summers said will record every interaction “so that we have transparency and memory.”

Early pilots of the program have allowed faculty to use Obsidian to translate course policies into plain language for students. It’s also being used to evaluate portfolios for nontraditional students.

Summers and his team are also taking time to train participants in how to most effectively and ethically use the platform, he said.

That’s necessary, said Virginia Byrne, an expert in AI who teaches at Morgan State.

“I think there’s been an over-adoption of AI tools in higher education without folks on the ground being trained appropriately,” said Byrne, who currently has multiple federal research grants studying AI.

“It’s important to facilitate interdisciplinary conversations about AI amongst faculty and students,” she said.

Morgan State, which has been hosting conversations and trainings about Obsidian, is on par with much-better-resourced institutions, Summers said, pointing to Yale University, Georgia State University and Arizona State University, where he worked before being recruited to the Baltimore university.

“Maryland is a hotbed for quantum innovation,” Summers said.

Gov. Wes Moore has invested millions of taxpayer dollars into quantum research, a field of computing that holds the promise of massively increasing computing speed and capacity.

“We really do see Morgan as being primed to be an AI and quantum innovation engine,” Summers said. “Not just a jewel for the region and for Maryland, but really for the nation.”

Banner reporter Pamela Wood contributed to this story.

This story is published as part of the Baltimore News Collaborative, a project exploring the challenges and successes experienced by young people in Baltimore. The latest series explores the use of AI in education. The collaborative is supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. News members of the collaborative retain full editorial control.

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This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.