In a postponed presentation, Susan Sterrett, a Faculty Senate senator from philosophy, spoke with concern about the university’s relationships with Anthology, Blackboard’s parent company, and Microsoft and their artificial intelligence (AI) models.
Anthology is a privately-owned company, which means that it does not have to disclose its financial and business operations to the public. Sterrett compared it to Instructure, a publicly-owned company that owns Blackboard’s competitor, Canvas.
Sterrett outlined three concerns in her presentation: protecting students’ data privacy, protecting faculty’s “moral right” to authorship of their works, and security against cyberattacks.
In regards to AI, Sterrrett was mostly concerned with OpenAI, the AI research organization behind ChatGPT. She described OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, as having an “appetite” for content and pulling data to feed their AI.
John Jones, executive director of the Media Resources Center, who has been instrumental in the university’s transition to Blackboard Ultra, clarified the university’s unique relationship with both Anthology and Microsoft’s AI ventures.
Because the university is a business, it has different terms and conditions than the terms and conditions for the public.
The university previously looked into a move to Canvas in 2016 but ultimately decided that the move would be too expensive, according to Jones.
Now that the university has committed to integrating with Blackboard and moving to Blackboard Ultra, Jones said it would be even more difficult and expensive for the university to receive the same quality of service from Canvas as they do from Blackboard.
Further, the university employs a data management committee, which is charged with reviewing any new software or digital tools that the university uses. This committee also reviews and reconsiders the university’s relationships with software vendors each time those contracts are up for renewal.
There are seven generative AI tools that the university has turned on in Blackboard, according to Jones’ notes. They are all on the instructor’s end and that data is not used to train Microsoft’s AI models.
The next Faculty Senate meeting is on April 9 at 3:30 p.m. in Woolsey Hall 110A.
Susan G Sterrett • Apr 14, 2024 at 6:09 am
Thanks for reporting on my presentation to the Faculty Senate. The slides that I presented, as well as the slides that John Jones presented are both on the Faculty Senate Website, under “Documents and Reports.”
If you refer to those slides, you will see that John Jones presented the text from Microsoft about its AI tools. However, what I presented was Anthology’s Privacy Policy. Those are not the same thing. I think Jones was clear about that, too, as I recall that Jones said he was _not_ going to talk about Anthology. So I take issue with just one tiny part of your reporting: the statement that “John Jones . . . clarified the university’s unique relationship with both Anthology and Microsoft’s AI ventures.” I do not believe he did so for Anthology, nor claimed he would do so.
The reason for my focus on Anthology’s Privacy Policy was that Anthology collects all the information put into Blackboard, including all student entries on Discussion Board, and all communications between students and instructors, including messages. I recall saying during my presentation that “It’s not about the tech tools.” The Privacy Policy says what Anthology collects and who they may share it with. This was slide 27 of my slides. As you can see, it doesn’t name the companies Anthology shares our information with, they are identified only as “affiliates, subsidiaries and vendors” and “partners and other third parties.”
Anthology is more than just Blackboard. In its own words, as quoted on slides 6 and 7 of the slides I presented, it has a “vast stack of EdTech solutions” and has announced new features using student information (i.e., “aimed at improving student success and retention rates”)
Understanding what Anthology’s Privacy Policy does and does not say is a far larger issue than understanding what Microsoft says it does with the information supplied to it via its AI tools.