New this academic year, the AI in Research Discussion series explores how generative AI is studied and used across VCU. The VCU Libraries series is designed for faculty and advanced researchers.

Supporting the discussion series is libraries’ expertise in how generative AI is affecting the research and publication landscape. “Generative AI has changed the information environment, not just with chatbots and AI-generated images and videos, but also in the ways that people are going about their research and the topics that they are examining,” said Research Librarian Julie Arendt who is organizing the series.

“The idea is to provide a forum where researchers at VCU will discuss how they have gone about studying generative AI or have incorporated generative AI in their research process,” she said. Scheduled sessions represent broad thinking from varied fields– from fashion merchandising and design and urban planning to bioinformatics and health care research.  

The presentations will be brief to allow for ample discussion and questions and time to think about how the examples relate to other areas of research. Each session is a time to think about the issues involved and to learn from each other.  

Additional discussion topics will be added to the series for the spring semester. The first in the series are: 

Speculative Fashion: Education Futures, Hawa Stwodah and Jennie Cook

Wednesday, Nov. 19, 4 p.m., Cabell Library, Room 203

This presentation examines how generative AI and multimodal technologies are reshaping fashion design and merchandising education within the evolving Metaverse. Positioning the university as a model for broader cultural and technological change, the research explores how students engage with intelligent systems to develop AI literacy, creativity, and ethical awareness. Drawing on qualitative data and interdisciplinary insights, the study highlights the pedagogical opportunities and challenges of integrating human–AI collaboration in design education.

Can AI read and understand the scientific literature? Dr. Peter Uetz

Wednesday, Dec. 3, 3 p.m., Online

People ask ChatGPT & their fellow LLMs questions every day, but how much does a chatbot (LLM) really know? This presentation will address this question by drilling into some details of organismal biology, asking four different chatbots, for example, what do they know about snakes? While this sounds very specific, it addresses the general problem of how much information an LLM covers, its accuracy, sources, hallucinations, and other problems that chatbots promise to solve, but … don’t. Peter Uetz will present some results he found with a group of students and VCU collaborators.