Anthropic forms higher education advisory board, launches AI fluency courses

Amazon-backed AI startup Anthropic has launched two initiatives to facilitate artificial intelligence education in universities. Announced on Wednesday, this includes a Higher Education Advisory Board and three new AI Fluency courses for students.

The Higher Education Advisory Board will guide the development of Claude, Anthropic’s in-house LLM, for use in teaching, research, and learning. The board will be chaired by Rick Levin, who served as president of Yale University from 1993 to 2013 and later as chief executive of Coursera from 2014 to 2017 before continuing as senior adviser until 2024.

“Anthropic is deeply committed to AI safety and responsibility in its products and every aspect of its business,” Levin said in a statement.

“Our role is to advise the company as it develops ethically sound policies and products that will enable learners, teachers, and administrators to benefit from AI’s transformative potential while upholding the highest standards of academic integrity and protecting student privacy,” he added.

Levin is set to be joined by a set of 5 education veterans. This includes David Leebron, former president of Rice University, James DeVaney, associate vice provost at the University of Michigan, Julie Schell, assistant vice provost at the University of Texas, Austin, Matthew Rascoff, vice provost for digital education at Stanford University, and Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of Complete College America.

Alongside the advisory board, Anthropic has introduced three AI Fluency courses co-developed with educators Rick Dakan of Ringling College of Art and Design and Joseph Feller of University College Cork. The courses are released under a Creative Commons license, allowing universities to adapt them for their own use. This will available across the globe including India.

The courses include AI Fluency for Educators, which supports faculty in integrating AI into teaching materials, assessments, and classroom discussions; AI Fluency for Students, which focuses on responsible use of AI in coursework and career planning; and Teaching AI Fluency, which provides frameworks and curriculum guidance for campuses introducing AI literacy.

At a time when AI significantly is taking over workplaces, it becomes pertinent to impart education in a regulated manner with AI, and Anthropic’s recent announcement seem to be towards this effort.