Copilot for Students 👨‍✈️

By Burak Tunca • Read Time: 2 min

Hello Everyone!

This week I would like to highlight two recent developments. First, Lund University has decided to provide access to Copilot chat for all students. Second, the EU regulations for AI have been discussed at length at LUSEM this week.

Have a nice weekend!
Burak

Copilot for Students

In a recent (unexpected) development, Lund University announced that all students on cmapus now have access to Microsoft Copilot Chat, with the same functions and data privacy features we had discussed earlier.

Copilot is a capable model and it has in-built data privacy features, yet it lacks (for now) several critical components like prompt libraries and custom AI agents, which we believe are essential in AI integration. Nonetheless, looks like to it is the solution we have for now. If you would like to use it in class together with your students and do not where to start, you can visit this blogpost which provides an overview and presents the main features of Copilot. Remember that both teachers and students must log in with LU credentials for data privacy to work.

EU and AI

On September 19th, LUSEM hosted AI Lund’s workshop on European AI Act. Several leading legal scholars, from LU and abroad, have participated together with hundreds who have joined the event IRL and online, representing both industry and policy makers. The presentations I have listened to clearly showed how seriously EU is taking data integrity issues in AI, while also illustrating how several lawyers misunderstand the technology. Frankly, I left the workshop with mixed feelings.

EU has been very tough (maybe rightfully) on tech companies with AI tools. For example, in the EU we will not get the new Apple Intelligence features. Similarly, we also do not have access to the most capable open-source AI model (Llama 3.1) from Meta. I personally despise META for Facebook and Instagram, yet I ahve to give them the credit for developing a free, open source AI model that can foster AI adoption even by smaller actors.

In relation to this, an open letter to EU has been published recently by a group of companies, researchers and institutions, expressing concerns about the fragmented and inconsistent regulations that will hinder technological competitiveness of the EU. Signatories include, among others CEOs of Ericsson, Spotify, Meta, Klarna, and Prada. As highlighted in the post below, access to open source models are essential for innovation: