December 3, 2025

The AI Center is finishing up an active semester of AI Bytes, reading group sessions, and student research and entrepreneurship. In the spring semester, we’ll continue to offer ongoing programming and resources as we work with faculty, staff, and students to navigate the continually evolving AI landscape.



The ChatGPT Team pilot we pursued in the last year offered faculty access to a paid model they could experiment with. Open AI has now announced a free version of ChatGPT offered specifically to K-12 Educators which has obviated the need for paid subscriptions. This teacher-specific version of ChatGPT also offers higher levels of data protection designed for K-12 schools. Whether you were part of the pilot or not, you can follow the link to follow a brief verification process.

We’ve appreciated the engagement of faculty and staff in the AI Center’s work throughout the semester!

November 30 marked the third anniversary of the public introduction of ChatGPT, which has prompted some reporting and reflection on the state of the technology’s impact so far.

• Axios reports on the extent to which generative AI systems are actually affecting tasks in the workplace and finds that 41% of workers spend time working with AI outputs.
• The PBS News Hour recently featured a segment on the effects of generative AI on college campuses, emphasizing a split between negative and positive perceptions, even as Michael Clune argues in The Atlantic that “Colleges are Preparing to Self-Lobotomize” by incorporating generative AI into learning.
• In The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel points out that “The World Still Hasn’t Made Sense of ChatGPT,” documenting the development of the systems and the discourse around them, tracking “the enthusiasm for these machines, as well as the loathing and anxiety they inspire.”

Google Releases Gemini 3

On November 18, Google released its Gemini 3 Pro model, which has gotten lots of notice as a potential new leader in the LLM space. Google has also introduced new features to other AI products.

• The Wall Street Journal writes about the capacities of Google’s new model and its status as a rival to ChatGPT in “How Google Finaly Leapfrogged Rivals With New Gemini Rollout,” and Ethan Mollick traces the trajectory of AI development in “Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3”.
• Google’s “Nano Banana Pro” image generator shows the enormous strides image generation has made in the last three years. Wired goes “Hands on With Google’s Nano Banana Pro Image Generator” and explores the tool’s growing ability to generate images of text and map out diagrams and infographics.
• In the course of the fall semester, Google has updated its NotebookLM tool with Deep Research, more source types, audio and video overviews, and flashcards.

The Computer Science team has expanded curricular offerings this year to develop the AI skills of IMSA Students and IMSA Scholars, from new AI 1 and 2 electives to SIR projects, a sophomore research cohort, and the AI Credential. They’re also integrating ethical thinking about AI into their curriculum, and in many Computer Science Inquiry sections they’ve coordinated with History teacher and AI Ethics Lead Dr. Lee Eysturlid to consider AI use in the context of three schools of ethical thought, specifically in the context of statements by AI-oriented corporations.

Students find and explore the ethics statements of AI companies and companies that use AI in their work. Then, they learn about the basics of three ethical schools—deontology (Kant), utilitarianism, and contractualism (Rawls). Working in groups to identify aspects of the statements that rely on ideas from these different schools, students gain insight into the ways different approaches to ethical thinking show up (or don’t show up) in corporate statements of values.

In contrast to a limited vision of ethics that proclaims a fixed set of dos and don’ts, the sequence encourages students to develop critical frameworks that build on long-standing traditions of moral philosophy. Many of our students will enter tech careers and have influence over the human values written into AI systems and into the philosophies of the companies that build them. The ethical thinking they develop alongside their technological knowledge in CSI promises to help them develop into principled technological leaders.

Thanks for reading—Our next update arrives in two weeks!

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