A house of representatives committee has heard that Australia needs to find affordable ways to make generative AI models available to university students, who are facing a “digital divide” in their education.
CSU librarian and AI strategy advisor Carlo Iacono told the committee inquiry into generative AI that the university could not afford to provide students with free access to ChatGPT 4.0, the latest version of the popular natural language generation model.
He said that even ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Copilot, which are less advanced but still powerful models, were too expensive for the university, which has more than 36,000 students.
He suggested that instead of relying on commercial models, Australia should explore open-source alternatives, such as the Mistral AI-based Huggingface project, which aims to create a large and diverse collection of LLMs (large language models) that can be used for various tasks and domains.
He said that participating in and supporting such a project could give Australia’s institutions access to cutting-edge AI capabilities without depending on vendors.
However, if commercial models were deemed necessary, he said that universities should collaborate and negotiate with companies like Microsoft at a national level, rather than individually.
