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Our Commitment
NECO is committed to:
- Educating students, faculty, and staff on the ethical use of AI generative tools: We will integrate instruction on responsible AI use into relevant courses and learning opportunities, equipping students to navigate these tools thoughtfully in academic, clinical, and research settings. We will provide professional development opportunities for faculty and staff to better understand the ethical implications of generative AI use in their respective areas.
- Promoting best practices: We will develop and implement best practices for AI-assisted learning and clinical applications, including mitigating potential risks and fostering ethically appropriate, context-dependent use.
- Adapting to evolving technologies: We acknowledge the rapid development of AI and commit to continuously adapting our approach to ensure its ethical and responsible integration into our educational and clinical ecosystem.
- Centering our approach on NECO’s mission, we will prioritize ethical principles while maximizing benefits for our community, minimizing potential risks, and upholding the College’s mission to:
- Integrate innovative education with early and diverse clinical experiences to prepare today’s optometrists for tomorrow’s optometry.
- Advance the frontiers of optometric knowledge through evidence-based research and translate that knowledge to improve patients’ lives worldwide.
- Cultivate compassionate care of the highest proficiency, integrity, and professionalism; influence public policy; expand access to comprehensive and specialty optometric services; and instill sensitivity to diverse communities' health and social welfare.
Ethical Principles
To achieve our goals, the College will prioritize the following ethical principles:
- Human-centered learning: AI tools should enhance, not replace, direct interaction and instruction by human beings and support our core objectives. Anyone who chooses to use them should evaluate each tool carefully based on its utility.
- Transparency: We will be transparent about the use of AI tools in the course curriculum, student activities, teaching, research, administrative work, and patient care. Resources for mitigating any potential risks will be readily available.
- Quality and integrity: Information provided by AI tools must always be evaluated by qualified professionals to ensure accuracy and credibility.
- Privacy and security: We will prioritize protecting personal data and ensuring user awareness of potential security risks associated with specific AI tools. We will strive to strike a balance between privacy and the legitimate use of data for educational and healthcare purposes.
- Mitigating bias: We will acknowledge and address potential biases within AI tools by critically evaluating information and taking steps to ensure fairness and inclusivity.
- Equitable access: All students should have equal access to the required AI tools within a course. We will ensure that AI is used inclusively and does not discriminate against any group of learners.
- Accountability: The human author remains accountable for all content, regardless of AI involvement. We will ensure that AI tools empower users while respecting human relationships and ethical obligations. Ethical use of AI includes accurately verifying and citing all authentic sources and AI-generated material when included in an assignment, learning object, work function, research process, or patient care.
- Accessibility: We will ensure that all AI-powered tools and resources used in coursework, clinical settings or research are accessible to community members with disabilities.
Generative AI 101
Generative AI Tools
The following tools are a sampling of the hundreds available (not including the AI capabilities that are being built into the systems we already use).
AI technology changes rapidly, so information may be out of date. This list is for information purposes only. NECO does not endorse or advise that you use any tool that is not part of NECO’s official Gen AI Toolkit. The tools that are NOT part of NECO’s toolkit are marked with an asterisk *.
Click on the tabs below to sort tools by use, and on each box to learn more about the featured tool.
Can be used for a variety of text-based applications, including writing assistance, answering questions, and generating ideas.
Similar to ChatGPT, but can also process and generate images, audio, and other forms of media.
Billed as “virtual assistant” for work. Similar to ChatGPT, but primarily geared toward Microsoft 365 users.
Can summarize documents, create study guides, timelines, FAQs, flash cards, audio overviews, podcasts, and more. Uses only the data you tell it to use.
Can be used for a variety of text-based applications, including writing assistance, answering questions, and generating ideas.
Similar to ChatGPT, but can also process and generate images, audio, and other forms of media.
Billed as “virtual assistant” for work. Similar to ChatGPT, but primarily geared toward Microsoft 365 users.
Can summarize documents, create study guides, timelines, FAQs, flash cards, audio overviews, podcasts, and more. Uses only the data you tell it to use.
Intended to be useful in research. Assists in the discovery and evaluation of scientific articles by identifying relevant literature, assessing credibility of resources and tracking citation trends.
Writing assistant that helps with grammar, punctuation and style.
An AI-powered search engine for research papers. Sign up for an account using your NECO Gmail for access to the Pro version - which will also allow you to access full text where available.
Can be used for a variety of text-based applications, including writing assistance, answering questions, and generating ideas.
Similar to ChatGPT, but can also process and generate images, audio, and other forms of media.
Can summarize documents, create study guides, timelines, FAQs, flash cards, audio overviews, podcasts, and more. Uses only the data you tell it to use.
Can summarize documents, create study guides, timelines, FAQs, flash cards, audio overviews, podcasts, and more. Uses only the data you tell it to use.
Intended to be useful in research. Assists in the discovery and evaluation of scientific articles by identifying relevant literature, assessing credibility of resources and tracking citation trends.
An AI-powered search engine for research papers. Sign up for an account using your NECO Gmail for access to the Pro version - which will also allow you to access full text where available.
Intended to be useful in research. Search for and summarize articles, organize content, and manage references.
[Experimental] Can generate audio discussion of key points of a selected paper from arxiv.org or other select domains.
Can be used for a variety of text-based applications, including writing assistance, answering questions, and generating ideas.
Similar to ChatGPT, but can also process and generate images, audio, and other forms of media.
Billed as “virtual assistant” for work. Similar to ChatGPT, but primarily geared toward Microsoft 365 users.
Can summarize documents, create study guides, timelines, FAQs, flash cards, audio overviews, podcasts, and more. Uses only the data you tell it to use.
Writing assistant that helps with grammar, punctuation and style.
Can be used for a variety of text-based applications, including writing assistance, answering questions, and generating ideas.
Similar to ChatGPT, but can also process and generate images, audio, and other forms of media.
Can summarize documents, create study guides, timelines, FAQs, flash cards, audio overviews, podcasts, and more. Uses only the data you tell it to use.
Creates videos from text using AI avatars and voiceovers in 140+ languages.
Can be used for a variety of text-based applications, including writing assistance, answering questions, and generating ideas.
Similar to ChatGPT, but can also process and generate images, audio, and other forms of media.
Billed as “virtual assistant” for work. Similar to ChatGPT, but primarily geared toward Microsoft 365 users.
Can summarize documents, create study guides, timelines, FAQs, flash cards, audio overviews, podcasts, and more. Uses only the data you tell it to use.
Similar to ChatGPT, but can also process and generate images, audio, and other forms of media.
Billed as “virtual assistant” for work. Similar to ChatGPT, but primarily geared toward Microsoft 365 users.
Creates videos from text using AI avatars and voiceovers in 140+ languages.
Originally designed to help visualize how neural networks perceive images; now primarily used for artistic purposes.