Although basic users of generative artificial intelligence tools can access this technology for free, colleges and universities making big strides in AI must invest in hardware and software. One would expect R1-classified higher ed institutions to be taking those steps, but AI labs—both physical and virtual—are popping up at a number of colleges of all types.
What do in-person AI labs look like and how are they being used? Following is a glimpse at what the AI action is like at four institutions: Pace University, Foothill College, Sacred Heart University, and Bryant University.
How Do Institutions Describe Their AI Lab?
AI lab descriptions can lean explanatory or conversational.
Pace (New York City) and Bryant (R.I.) take the explanatory route:
- Bryant’s AI lab main page describes the lab as “a hub for students and faculty to collaborate and explore the potential of AI in business. This dynamic space serves as a showcase for Bryant’s data-driven and innovative culture and promotes the Data Science and Information Systems programs to prospective students and corporate partners.”
- The top of Pace’s page notes, “Students, faculty, and staff come together to research and learn about artificial intelligence—from machine learning and natural language processing to powerful prompts for generative AI.”
Foothill College (of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District in Calif.) and Sacred Heart (Conn.) use the more conversational approach:
- “Welcome to the Foothill College Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab – The AI lab is where we explore and learn about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Robotics.”
- “Immerse yourself in the latest AI technology and the chance to collaborate on useful, new applications in our state-of-the-art facility,” beckons Sacred Heart’s AI Lab page. The lab “offers the cutting-edge tools needed to tackle new and arising challenges in our modern world.”
What Needs Do AI Labs Meet?
Pace’s lab, according to an associate dean in a March 2024 announcement, allows the university to “consolidate, strengthen and extend the existing AI initiatives and create exciting new ones in education and research-leveraging partnerships within and outside the university.”
Bryant’s “why” involves allowing students and faculty to collaborate and explore what AI can do in business, plus showcasing how the university has a data-driven culture as well as promoting its data science and information systems programs to prospective students and corporate partners.
Sacred Heart describes its lab as a collaboration to address issues in the world and “collectively drive the contemporary run into digital revolution.” In the process, students learn “how to manage a project and bring a project to completion,” says Bob McCloud, a computer science professor. “In AI, the most important thing we teach them is, what is good data, what is reliable data, and how to structure data so you can use in AI process.”
Foothill, meanwhile, is one of dozens of community colleges collaborating with the American Association of Community Colleges, Dell Technologies and Intel to grow the AI Incubator Network and Intel’s AI for Workforce programs.
Who Can Use AI Labs?
These labs are typically billed as open to all faculty, students and staff. Pace calls it “as the central hub of AI for the Pace community, offering training and opportunities to learn, grow and collaborate.”
Internal (students in related courses, the esports club team at Sacred Heart, the student-run Google Developer Group at Pace, for example) and external (like the New York tech community at Pace, invited to network with students) groups are more targeted AI lab users.
What Equipment Do AI Labs Have?
Students and other visitors at Pace bring laptops and connect to the high-performance computing (HPC) and Nvidia GPUs in the lab, says spokesperson Sean Coughlin. Additionally, three Alienware workstations are available. In the same building, the separate Robotics Lab offers hands-on training using a Clearpath Humanoid robot, a mobile manipulator and Clearpath Jackal devices used in computer vision education and research. Plus, Coughlin says, “the lab sports a Shadow Robot Hand.” Ph.D. students conduct AI research, using the robots for experiments and to develop models.
Bryant’s AI lab has a dedicated space for robots and includes two humanoids (Pepper and NAOv6), two vehicle robots, and robotic arms. It houses five collaborative GPU workstations with chips manufactured by NVIDIA, plus movable whiteboards (for more workspace and as privacy partitions) and large-screen monitors. “The AI Lab is designed for students to experiment with machine learning and its applications in robotics,” says Chen Zhang, an associate professor of information system analytics.
Forty Alienware computers with advanced processing capabilities and 24 separate workstations that can access three dedicated servers for student and faculty research are found in Sacred Heart’s lab, which also has object recognition equipment and eye trackers.
What Are Some Ways AI Labs Are Used?
Foothill’s AI lab has supported the college’s Tools for Transition and Work program supporting neurodivergent individuals. Four students in a winter 2023 pilot program spent their academic quarter building autonomous robots and learning engineering and coding skills. The number of participants has since grown to at least nine. Meanwhile, staff and faculty provide AI exhibits and demos at college events, including those for youth from local organizations.
Sacred Heart’s lab has helped the local community, too. In one project, professors and students studied how to improve a municipal tree planting program between the town and homeowners, explains McCloud. The study identified the best tree types and providers for various circumstances.
In another project, Sacred Heart students, professors, athletes and coaches looked at the correlation between time played and performance. The work involved monitoring training, statistics, sleep minutes and game minutes to predict optimal training levels.
“It seems as if some players are playing too many minutes for optimum performance,” says McCloud. “The idea of AI is to be able to look at reliable data and learn from it and then keep learning.”
And in an ongoing study, convolutional neural networks are being used to show how fraud can be detected in painting attribution.
Pace students’ experiential opportunities have included the AI Internship Experience Program. Using the lab, student teams developed AI models that could classify and generate images of butterflies, flowers and Minecraft-inspired visuals. Also, faculty developed a module for a Design Faculty Global Network course, covering equity-centered AI design. About 15 Pace students took the online course, taught by professors from Columbia, Finland, Portugal and the U.S.
Bryant data analytics students have used the AI lab to research a project involving AAA travel booking data and how it can predict whether and why some people cancel their trips. Corporate partners can use the AI lab for meetings, presentations and research, with the hope that students with expertise in AI, machine learning, analytics and robotics could participate, plus serve as a recruitment pool.
When students have opportunities to work with AI, they’re not only building technical skills but also becoming skilled in project management and bringing new information to the world.
“Students learn how to define scope, they learn how to say what they’re going to do in a project at the beginning,” says McCloud. “We focus on constructing or importing accurate, reliable data sets and then figuring out how to use those data sets to increase knowledge.”
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