Artificial Intelligence Community

Several months ago, Rice University signed a contract with Google for a Rice Google Workspace. Over the last couple of months, several staff have started to see (and apply) the phenomenal potential of NotebookLM and Google Gems, especially with Gemini Pro activated. Over the course of the last month, it has become extremely clear that these tools have astonishing transformative potential as they require no prior coding or AI tool development knowledge to implement in a series of incredible ways. In particular, NotebookLM has the potential to completely transform university operations, service provision, risk management, staff training, change management, and compliance overall. If any of you have been engaging with NotebookLM and Gems I'd be hugely interested in the exchange of ideas with you.  In just a few days, we built a tool that functions at the level of a 20 yr + experienced RA in terms of the quality and consistency of the responses (including accurate citation) that it was giving to all manner of questions. Has anyone had any similar breakthroughs (or run into issues) with using the Google Workspace for Research Admin support?

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James Hayward
Director of Post Award Management and Technology
Rice University
Houston, TX
(832) 421-7027
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Thanks so much, James, for sharing your experience with NotebookLM-this is incredibly exciting to hear. We're beginning to explore NotebookLM at Yale as well, and your reflections resonate strongly with what we're seeing across institutions as these integrated AI ecosystems mature.

Within Yale, we've been piloting a range of AI tools across our Microsoft Co-Pilot, Google Gemini, and 3-rd party environments (Open AI ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, etc.), and have begun targeted AI solutions for expenditure review, document intelligence, staff training, and process automation. The no-code/low-code nature of tools like NotebookLM really does open the door for broad operational impact, particularly in areas like compliance, service delivery, and knowledge management.

I also know that colleagues at other institutions-including Lisa Wilson at Emory, who is leading some excellent work in this space-are seeing similar transformative potential.

I'd welcome the opportunity to exchange ideas and compare use cases. It feels like we're collectively entering a new phase of what AI-enabled research administration can look like.

Thanks,

Several months ago, Rice University signed a contract with Google for a Rice Google Workspace. Over the last couple of months, several staff have started to see (and apply) the phenomenal potential of NotebookLM and Google Gems, especially with Gemini Pro activated. Over the course of the last month, it has become extremely clear that these tools have astonishing transformative potential as they require no prior coding or AI tool development knowledge to implement in a series of incredible ways. In particular, NotebookLM has the potential to completely transform university operations, service provision, risk management, staff training, change management, and compliance overall. If any of you have been engaging with NotebookLM and Gems I'd be hugely interested in the exchange of ideas with you.  In just a few days, we built a tool that functions at the level of a 20 yr + experienced RA in terms of the quality and consistency of the responses (including accurate citation) that it was giving to all manner of questions. Has anyone had any similar breakthroughs (or run into issues) with using the Google Workspace for Research Admin support?

------------------------------
James Hayward
Director of Post Award Management and Technology
Rice University
Houston, TX
(832) 421-7027
------------------------------

We are certainly at that tipping point, and perhaps already past it in terms of having founded confidence in some of the licensable generative AI tool offerings like NotebookLM. The big question on the near horizon is operationalization and implementation. How do we configure, maintain, and deploy to workflows most effectively? How do we use these tools to be a force multiplier in support of existing and future staff efficiency?

Thanks so much, James, for sharing your experience with NotebookLM-this is incredibly exciting to hear. We're beginning to explore NotebookLM at Yale as well, and your reflections resonate strongly with what we're seeing across institutions as these integrated AI ecosystems mature.

Within Yale, we've been piloting a range of AI tools across our Microsoft Co-Pilot, Google Gemini, and 3-rd party environments (Open AI ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, etc.), and have begun targeted AI solutions for expenditure review, document intelligence, staff training, and process automation. The no-code/low-code nature of tools like NotebookLM really does open the door for broad operational impact, particularly in areas like compliance, service delivery, and knowledge management.

I also know that colleagues at other institutions-including Lisa Wilson at Emory, who is leading some excellent work in this space-are seeing similar transformative potential.

I'd welcome the opportunity to exchange ideas and compare use cases. It feels like we're collectively entering a new phase of what AI-enabled research administration can look like.

Thanks,

Several months ago, Rice University signed a contract with Google for a Rice Google Workspace. Over the last couple of months, several staff have started to see (and apply) the phenomenal potential of NotebookLM and Google Gems, especially with Gemini Pro activated. Over the course of the last month, it has become extremely clear that these tools have astonishing transformative potential as they require no prior coding or AI tool development knowledge to implement in a series of incredible ways. In particular, NotebookLM has the potential to completely transform university operations, service provision, risk management, staff training, change management, and compliance overall. If any of you have been engaging with NotebookLM and Gems I'd be hugely interested in the exchange of ideas with you.  In just a few days, we built a tool that functions at the level of a 20 yr + experienced RA in terms of the quality and consistency of the responses (including accurate citation) that it was giving to all manner of questions. Has anyone had any similar breakthroughs (or run into issues) with using the Google Workspace for Research Admin support?

------------------------------
James Hayward
Director of Post Award Management and Technology
Rice University
Houston, TX
(832) 421-7027
------------------------------