University of Alaska leadership presented a draft artificial intelligence policy to the Board of Regents earlier this month. If approved, it would require all three campuses to have an AI plan in place for students, faculty and staff.
The guiding principles in the draft emphasize not replacing human talent, maintaining data security and leveraging AI to improve access to education services.
Ben Shier is the university’s Chief Information Technology Officer. At the Board of Regents meeting at UAS, he said many questions sparked by AI are not new to the university.
“How do you ensure data privacy and protection? How do you provide monitoring? How do you do all of those kinds of things?” he said. “AI only amplifies some of those questions, but they’re not necessarily new topics. AI just brings greater focus to them.”
There are many types of artificial intelligence, including generative AI. That’s a system based on large language models that produces content based on prompts. Students using generative AI is on the rise, according to a 2025 survey from Inside Higher Ed. It finds that about 85% of college students use generative AI in their coursework.
Shier said the draft policy came together over the summer, and the university did not have the chance to get enough feedback from faculty and students. He said it needs to collect more feedback now that the school year is underway.
Regent Christine Ressler asked about the university’s ability to maintain data security with current AI usage. The university offers some guidance on how to maintain data security on its website. But Shier said the university currently can’t control and track every usage of AI.
“If you have something like you’re working on health-related data, we assess the tools against health data and say these are the places where you can put that data into these tools and where you can’t,” he said. “And so that guidance is available today, and it’s something that we continue to work on.”
The university plans to collect student feedback this fall through listening sessions and online surveys, but it has not scheduled any dates as of Wednesday afternoon. University leadership plans to submit a finalized draft for approval at the November regents meeting.