UC San Diego eyes campuswide AI coordinating structure in new initiative

As institutions across the world establish approaches to using burgeoning artificial intelligence technology, UC San Diego in La Jolla is working to synergize its efforts across the campus.

Recently, UCSD formalized what it calls the Gaia Initiative, invoking the name of the personification of Earth in ancient Greek mythology. The effort, led by the university’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, or HDSI, aims to establish “a campuswide coordinating structure for AI use.”

In particular, the work will focus on understanding Earth’s natural systems.

Gaia is the creation of Duncan Watson-Parris, an atmospheric physicist at Scripps Oceanography whose position is a joint appointment of HDSI and Scripps.

Over the past couple of years, Watson-Parris focused on building inter-institutional collaboration to gain better understanding of the technology and expanding its use. This past year, he said, the task of supporting and coordinating AI exploration across UCSD began to bottleneck.

He began exploring a larger initiative that could bring additional expertise and scale out the work. With Gaia, he has a team of about 30 faculty members across the campus, in addition to student helpers and researchers.

The effort had a soft launch this summer as the team developed its website and assembled colleagues.

The Gaia Initiative comes as AI is increasingly present in everyday life.

“I think people perhaps rightly were skeptical if not downright annoyed by the hype and don’t believe it will fulfill some of the promise that’s being portrayed in the media,” Watson-Parris said. “That is equally true in … the scientific fields.

“I think there’s starting to be a realization that maybe there’s something to this. Maybe there are places where it will be very useful, if not transformative. … Perhaps there will be places where it will really change things.”

Gaia’s website says its research focus areas include climate change, weather and hurricane prediction, ocean monitoring and atmospheric science.

Watson-Parris added that scientists hope to build out research programs through Gaia and acquire external funding for those projects.

“Gaia is positioned to lead a new era of Earth intelligence,” according to the website. “It will deliver deeper scientific insight, predictive power for climate resilience and modern data-centric training for the next generation.”

Scripps held a Gaia Seminar Series in October, and on Dec. 1 held the initiative’s first formal meeting.

The kickoff event assembled research groups from across UC San Diego that are exploring and using AI in their own ways.

The event showcased several keynote speakers, including industry leaders from Nvidia and Microsoft, among others.

“We discussed a number of things … around how partnering with industry would provide them with opportunities to tap into our talent and data but also provide us and our students access to their resources and other engineering skills they have,” Watson-Parris said.

“We had a good chat as well about some of the aspects around education and training, because there’s a lot of anxiety in students in particular at the moment about the job market and about what AI will mean for their prospects.”

The turnout stood out to Watson-Parris.

“You put yourself out there and you put these things together and you never quite know what the appetite will be, but I was delighted with the attendance, the talks and the general buzz in the room and excitement about the opportunities there are in this space across UCSD,” he said.

AI research is not uncommon at universities. But according to those involved in the initiative, Gaia stands out because of the large quantity of data Scripps possesses and the campus’s focus on collaboration.

“People are figuring out how to use these tools,” Watson-Parris said. “And now it’s kind of getting to a point where we can coalesce those findings and learnings. Bringing them together at this time makes a lot of sense and allows us to bring to bear on bigger questions and bigger data.”

Learn more about the initiative at gaia.ucsd.edu.