GW School of Business officials named its first chief artificial intelligence officer to guide the school’s faculty, staff and students through a rapidly changing AI landscape.
Patrick Hall, a teaching assistant professor of decision science, said Dean Sevin Yeltekin outlined several priorities for him in his new role, including surveying AI best practices at other institutions, taking stock of existing AI initiatives at the school and supporting new programs to support responsible uses of the technology. His appointment late last month comes as University President Ellen Granberg announced a project to develop a University-wide AI strategy this week as part of the implementation of GW’s new strategic framework.
“This new role reflects GW Business’ commitment to supporting faculty and staff as we navigate rapid advancements in artificial intelligence—ensuring that our community benefits from trustworthy, pragmatic, and human-centered AI practices,” the release announcing Hall’s appointment states.
Hall said in his role, he will develop responsible AI use policies as “rules of the road” for GWSB community members, support programming the GWSB Board of Advisors sponsors about AI and help the school develop an award process to highlight innovative uses of AI at the school.
“For example, a key step in the awards process will be developing a rubric to evaluate AI use cases,” Hall said in an email. “Inspired by work at major AI conferences, I’m interested in exploring how language models themselves might assist in evaluating AI applications.”
Hall said he is working with colleagues across the University, including the GW Trustworthy AI Institute and the Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law & Society, with which he is developing AI events and programming.
“This programming will focus on U.S. corporate governance of AI systems, drawing on frameworks from the banking sector and from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), combined with practical approaches to human-AI teaming,” he said in an email.
He said another one of his priorities is to establish a human-AI teaming seminar that examines ways AI can support human productivity without over relying on the technology or automating tasks.
“For example, rather than letting a chatbot determine your answer, you might ask it to generate options for you to choose among, or ask it to critique your reasoning so that you can improve it,” Hall said in an email.
He said he also plans to showcase the right situations for students to use AI, compared to other situations where it would be better to use tools like search features or statistical modeling.
“For instance, you wouldn’t ask a chatbot for the best route home during rush hour; you’d check a mapping app,” Hall said in an email. “And you shouldn’t use a chatbot for citations; you should use a search tool like Google Scholar.”
