AI at Kenyon

Kenyon faculty, staff and students are working together to ensure artificial intelligence is used thoughtfully, ethically and effectively across teaching, learning, research and administrative work. This means looking past the technical mechanics of how we engage with these tools to thoughtfully evaluate why and when their application truly aligns with our institutional mission.

Our goals are to:

Foster AI literacy to prepare our community to engage with new paradigms of thought, inquiry and interaction.
Guide practical adoption by connecting emerging AI tools to purposeful, high-impact use cases across teaching, learning and work.
Engage the community in open dialogue to explore questions, exchange ideas and spark ongoing conversations about AI.

What Is Generative AI?

Generative AI tools produce text, images, code and other content by learning patterns from large amounts of existing material. These systems, often called large language models or foundation models, predict likely outputs based on what they've learned, and can be adapted for many different tasks - from drafting emails to analyzing data.

AI has existed for decades, but recent advances in generative AI have made it far more accessible to the general public.

AI Literacy and Training

A foundational principle guiding Kenyon's approach to AI is that literacy must come before productivity. At this stage of the institution's AI journey, our goal is two-fold:

Helping the campus community develop a sound understanding of how these tools work
Encouraging broad engagement with AI tools

AI literacy refers to the knowledge, skills and understanding needed to effectively and responsibly interact with artificial intelligence systems. It encompasses several key areas:

Understanding AI capabilities and limitations: Knowing what AI can and cannot do, recognizing when you're interacting with AI systems, and understanding how they work at a basic level.
Critical evaluation skills: Being able to assess AI-generated content for accuracy, bias, and reliability, and understanding that AI can produce convincing but incorrect information.
Effective communication: Learning how to prompt AI systems effectively, ask clear questions and interpret responses appropriately.
Ethical awareness: Understanding issues like privacy, bias, job displacement and the broader societal impacts of AI technology.
Practical application: Knowing how to use AI tools productively while maintaining human judgment and oversight.
Safety and security: Recognizing potential risks like deepfakes, misinformation or data privacy concerns when using AI systems.

Where Can I Get Training?

On-Campus Offerings and Calendar Events

Stay informed about on-campus workshops, AI discussions and training sessions by monitoring official campus emails and the events calendar.

Online Courses

AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations: Learn to collaborate with AI systems effectively, efficiently, ethically and safely through Anthropic’s foundational framework.
Elements of AI (University of Helsinki): This world-renowned, nontechnical course breaks down how AI works, its possibilities and limitations, and its broader impact on society.
AI for Everyone (DeepLearning.AI): Taught by Andrew Ng, this entry-level course demystifies key AI concepts, terminology and realistic use cases without requiring technical or coding expertise.

AI Tools for the Kenyon Community

Kenyon supports a growing set of AI tools for teaching, learning and administrative work. Below is what's currently available, along with guidance for evaluating additional tools.

Google Gemini

What it is: Google's general-purpose AI assistant, available through your Kenyon Google account.

Why it matters: Useful for drafting, brainstorming, summarizing readings, explaining concepts and general Q&A — a flexible starting point for most AI-assisted tasks. Turn on Connected Apps to give the AI integrated access to Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar and more.

Who it's for: Everyone — faculty, staff and students.

Get started: Sign in with your Kenyon Google account at gemini.google.com.

Prefer to opt out: You can turn off Gemini and other AI features in Gmail, Docs, Drive and Search. See How to Turn Off Google AI Features at Kenyon for step-by-step instructions (sign in with your Kenyon Google account to view).

Gemini Notebook (formerly notebooklm)

What it is: A research and note-taking tool. Upload your own documents, readings or notes and get AI-generated summaries, answers and audio overviews — grounded only in the sources you provide.

Why it matters: Because it draws only on the material you upload, it’s a strong option for research, exam prep or synthesizing a stack of dense readings without the “made-up facts” risk of general AI chat.

Who it’s for: Everyone. Whether you're a student writing papers, a faculty member organizing research or staff managing complex documents.

Get started: Sign in with your Kenyon Google account at notebooklm.google.com.

Now Piloting: BoodleBox

Kenyon is piloting BoodleBox, a collaborative AI platform built specifically for higher education. It's one secure login that gets you into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and other top AI models, so you don't have to juggle separate accounts.

Why BoodleBox?

Secure and private by design. BoodleBox meets FERPA, HIPAA, SOC 2 and many other compliance standards. It never trains on our data; prompts sent to third-party models are anonymized, so nothing traces back to you or Kenyon.
Environmentally friendlier. Its token reduction technology uses up to 96% fewer tokens per chat, cutting both cost and the energy footprint of every interaction.
One platform, many models. One place to use all the top AI tools. You can ask the same question to different AIs and see who gives the best answer, build your own helper bots and work on things together with colleagues, classmates or coworkers.

Interested in joining the pilot? Reach out to genaiworkinggroup@kenyon.edu to get set up with an account.

Guidance and Best Practices

Safeguarding Kenyon Data in the Age of AI

Avoid entering confidential Kenyon information into AI tools, in accordance with the College’s Data Classification and Security Policy. This includes, but is not limited to, non-public financial, human resources, medical, and student record information.

Generative AI tools, especially when used with default settings, may not provide sufficient privacy protections and could expose sensitive information to unauthorized parties.

Choosing Additional AI Tools

Reference: AI Tool Assessment Framework

AI tools are a moving target, with new products launching faster than any institution can meaningfully evaluate them. Use these principles when choosing one:

Check how your data is used. Know whether uploaded content becomes training data.
Favor transparency. Choose tools that clearly disclose their data, privacy and security practices.
Verify before you trust. Treat AI output as a draft, not a final answer.
Consider accessibility, bias and fairness both in the tools you pick and the output they produce.

Key Concerns

Generative AI tools, especially when used with default settings, may not provide sufficient privacy protections and could expose sensitive information to unauthorized parties.

There are many concerns over the usage of AI. Here are a few of them:

Hallucinations

Generative AI systems can produce "hallucinations'" - responses that sound confident and plausible but contain fabricated information, incorrect facts or nonexistent citations. This happens because these systems are predicting the next word in a sequence, not verifying facts. Always review and revise any content generated by an AI tool before relying on it for academic or administrative purposes.