Innovation

This post outlines how I am thinking about how governance and community work together to support a Berkeley AI strategy, aligned with the University of California’s AI Guiding Principles. I’m making the case for a first layer of foundational governance needed to get the ball rolling— establishing basic contracts, security and data reviews, baseline risk assessments— and then getting the tools into peoples’ hands to learn and experiment. We created the UC Berkeley AI Community to leverage the strength of our diverse population and perspectives, to tap the community to accelerate the development and exchange of ideas and information towards building a more sophisticated institutional understanding of AI. Community engagement speeds the path to effective functional governance; ie, having the right existing decision-making bodies and roles making intentional choices about where and when Berkeley uses and does not use AI.

We are now accepting proposals for Berkeley's first-ever CTO Technology Innovation program. The CTO is looking to support proposals that will enhance the University's operations, bolster its research endeavors or help transform instruction and the classroom experience. The innovation project you propose should involve some combination of people, process, technology and information and support one or more of UC Berkeley's three key campus strategies:

Back in February, we began to put out the call for innovation proposals from all over campus, asking them to share their alignment with the Chancellor's top strategic priorities and also to address what the University needs NOW. For a top research University, no matter what hard times we're having, innovation isn't just a "nice to have" - it's an essential ingredient to maintaining our excellence and scaling access & equity for a Berkeley education. Many proposals we received tackle Berkeley's response to remote learning beyond Zoom during COVID-19.