The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation announced $159.8 million of support for the academic year ending in 2025, according to a WARF press release. Included in this sum is a $15 million grant over three years to support implementing human investment in artificial intelligence for the University of Wisconsin’s Research, Innovation and Scholarly Excellence Initiative.
Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin launched the RISE initiative in February as an effort to address significant societal issues and concepts that are pressing to Wisconsin and the world, according to the RISE initiative.
Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs John Zumbrunnen, who plays a lead role in implementing the initiative, said RISE is about enhancing the potential the university already has.
“We already have great people at work doing amazing things in AI, sustainability and health,” Zumbrunnen said. “What can we do to enhance their impact by bringing more colleagues and resources to play?”
RISE-AI, RISE-EARTH and RISE-THRIVE are the three segments of UW’s RISE initiative. RISE-EARTH and RISE-THRIVE are focused on enhancing university resources surrounding sustainability and health, respectively.
RISE-AI was the first focus of the RISE initiative and concentrates on both the technological processes and the human-focused implications and ethics of AI, according to RISE-AI’s webpage.
Zumbrunnen said the WARF money will help advance RISE-AI’s initiatives in three primary areas. Startup packages for faculty are a vital aspect to ensure new staff members have the resources they need to fulfill their work or research, Zumbrunnen said. He added that AI research would not be possible without the necessary investment in computer hardware, which is another area in which WARF’s money will be allocated.
“And then if you’re going to actually be able to have researchers use that hardware effectively, you need to hire more people too,” Zumbrunnen said about the third area the grant money could be put toward. “So you need data analysts, you need software engineers, and so that WARF money — you think about using it in those three ways to support the faculty we will be hiring in RISE-AI.”
The School of Human Ecology has seen an impact of the RISE-AI initiative through two new hires whose AI research will focus on human-centered approaches, according to a SOHE article.
Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at SOHE Nancy Wong, who is overseeing the RISE-AI initiative within SOHE, said WARF’s grant money will help implement AI into their work as a technological booster. AI is an effective tool for enhancing efficiency for routine processes in SOHE, and it does not fundamentally change the work researchers are already doing, Wong said.
“Let’s say it’s household finance that we’re looking at … how do we think about different ways technology can enable us to evaluate or help consumers make better decisions in terms of alternate credit scoring, for example,” Wong said.
Wong said, as opposed to it being a stigmatized technology to avoid, AI enhances efficiency for routine tasks like writing basic reports and processing data.
With implementing AI into standard processes, defining how to do so safely and ethically is at the top of mind for SOHE, Wong said.
“The obvious thing would be making sure there is always that human in the loop when it comes to interpreting results,” Wong said about the importance of human intervention surrounding AI.
Zumbrunnen said tackling AI safely and ethically is a multifaceted mission for RISE. Any new developing technologies bring both possibilities and challenges, and a part of the university’s mission is to be fully engaged with both, Zumbrunnen said.
Zumbrunnen added that it is essential to the RISE initiative to integrate a wide range of perspectives about AI from a diverse group of people. He added that because AI integration looks different in various academic spaces, there is not a one-size-fits-all approach.
“To use the UW language, this is what sifting and winnowing looks like,” Zumbrunnen said. “The whole idea of sifting and winnowing is out of that exchange of rival perspectives, out of many different ways of searching for the truth, we get closer to the truth. And I think that’s the spirit that animates us here.”
With AI constantly evolving, Zumbrunnen said WARF’s support helps put the university in the position to support scholarly engagement in AI for not just the next three years, but for the foreseeable future.
The grant money will help RISE-AI build infrastructure and hire people and researchers who are committed to AI integration for the long haul, Zumbrunnen said.
“We’ll have groups of people collaborating five years from now, 10 years from now on the most important issues and challenges that AI and whatever comes of AI raise for our society,” Zumbrunnen said. “And we can’t predict what those are going to be, but we position ourselves with the expertise and the support that we need to address whatever is coming next.”
