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Get the most interesting and important stories from the University of Pittsburgh.After Michael Madison stepped off the stage at a University Senate plenary in April 2023, he turned to his fellow panelists with a simple proposal. The campus was buzzing over a technology that had arrived only months before, and the School of Law professor didn’t want that energy to disappear into the usual academic silos.
That conversation became a monthly pizza lunch where faculty across disciplines could compare notes, share concerns and think through what generative artificial intelligence meant for their teaching and research. It also became an early thread in a broader, University-wide effort — one built collaboratively by faculty eager to talk through the technology and administrators working to coordinate a fast-moving set of AI initiatives across campus.
At the institutional level, that response took shape formally in February when Provost Joseph McCarthy announced the AI Coordination and Development Committee. Michael Colaresi, strategic advisor to the provost and director of the Hub for AI and Data Science Leadership (HAIL), chairs the group, which spans the Office of the Provost, Pitt Digital, Pitt Research, Pitt Health Sciences and Pitt Finance and Operations.
“We’re trying to reduce that opacity about how to get answers for people — and connect what we want to do with what we’re already good at doing,” Colaresi said.
The committee’s work ranges from setting guidance on responsible use to coordinating resources that advance a unified strategic vision across the University; one such resource is Pitt’s AI tool infrastructure — the institution-approved platforms Pitt Digital makes available to students, faculty and staff through Generative AI@Pitt.
Mark Henderson, vice chancellor and chief information officer, said the portfolio was built around two concerns: equity and privacy. It also ensures that all students have access to professional-grade tools regardless of their ability to pay for them.
“Most students are already using generative AI tools, primarily free versions without privacy protections,” Henderson said. “By providing institution-approved tools, we can ensure equitable access to professional-grade AI with privacy safeguards.”
But access to tools, said Annette Vee, faculty liaison for AI enablement at Pitt Digital and associate professor in the Department of English, is only part of the picture. Vee has spent the past two years running AI workshops for faculty in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and said the coordination work happening across campus is broader and deeper than what any website yet reflects.
“Pitt Digital is really good at providing access to tools, but we also need to help faculty use them effectively,” Vee said. “I think it’s crucial for faculty to know that they’re not on their own.”
For Henderson, AI tools help empower the Pitt community, not steer it.
“The tools are just one piece,” Henderson said. “Keeping Pitt competitive and positioned as a leader in innovation means working across the entire University — connecting the right people, funding the right conversations, and building the infrastructure that makes that ambition real. We’re not here to push a direction. We're here to make sure everyone at Pitt has what they need to find their own.”
What do students really think of AI?
Faculty from four Pitt campuses spent last spring asking 95 students a direct question: How are you actually using AI? The GenAI Conversations study, supported by Pitt Digital, used in-depth focus groups across the Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Johnstown and Bradford campuses to explore how students engage with generative AI, how the technology shapes their relationships with faculty and peers, and how the University can better support them.
Vee, who co-led the research, estimated that roughly 90% of Pitt students are already using generative AI in some form. Patrick Manning, a teaching associate professor in the Dietrich School’s Department of English, noted that students described the technology as generating “fractures or tensions” in their relationships with faculty — and said students were also wondering how their own professors use AI.
Vee added that blanket prohibitions on AI are unlikely to be effective on their own. She encouraged faculty to think carefully about how students are using the tools and to consider redesigning courses with that reality in mind. Explore more takeaways.
Below the institutional layer sits the Pitt AI Scholar Teacher Alliance (PASTA) the group Madison launched after that 2023 plenary. What started as five colleagues brown bagging in October 2023 has grown to more than 140 people on its listserv, with 25 or more attending monthly meetings in a Barco Law Building conference room — and pizza supplied by Pitt Digital.
Madison designed the gatherings to have no deliverables, no agenda and no hierarchy.
“PASTA is, and from the beginning has been, lunch,” he said. “The secret seems to be: Meet. Regularly. With food.”
HAIL Director Colaresi said the formal and informal structures are deliberately complementary. What surfaces in those lunch conversations, he said, finds its way into discussions with academic leadership and the Faculty Senate.
“Unlike Las Vegas, what’s said at PASTA doesn’t just stay at PASTA,” he said. “Being able to take those perspectives to the academic leadership team — I think that’s really important.”
Through HAIL, Colaresi has been running an ongoing speaker series and launched a biweekly newsletter for the broader Pitt community. And the DataSci+AI Forum, which drew nearly 400 attendees across two days in March, is planned to be held annually.
PASTA meets on the first Tuesday of every month, and Madison said he has been approached by faculty at Pitt’s regional campuses who want to start their own versions. At the start of the fall term, Madison will hand off coordination to Gayle Rogers, chair of the Department of English and a longtime PASTA participant. Participation is open to faculty and administrators across the University; interested faculty can madison [at] pitt.edu (email Madison directly).
Vee said faculty looking for guidance don’t need to wait: The Center for Teaching and Learning and the Writing Institute both have resources on responsible AI integration, and she expects that programming will grow as the coordination happening behind the scenes becomes more visible on campus.
For Colaresi, the measure of success isn’t the number of tools deployed or committees convened. It’s whether Pitt can model a different way of thinking about AI altogether.
“Responsible AI isn’t a technology,” he said. “It’s a practice — and those practices are informed by the context in which people live.”
Photography by Tom Altany