Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one way that we can address the challenges of onboarding, training, and education of research administrators. AI tools are not just for automating tasks but can also be key in revolutionizing how we capture, structure, and disseminate institutional knowledge.
Most people encounter generative artificial intelligence through an application. They upload a document, ask a question, and receive an answer without having to think much about where the model is running or who controls the infrastructure behind it. But for a university, those questions matter. They shape what happens to institutional data and which models students, staff, faculty, administrators, and researchers can use. They also determine how much control the institution keeps over the systems it depends on.
Artificial intelligence is changing how universities search, summarize, analyze, and generate information. AI is powerful, which is perhaps why less experienced users are sometimes surprised by this limitation:
We will be hosting our technical office hours every second Tuesday, where members of the AI4RA technical team will be on hand to answer your questions about deploying Vandalizer
A quality release focused on accuracy and reliability. Nothing to relearn — the tools you use just work better.
his piece tackles a problem that’s becoming more relevant as AI tools spread into everyday work: how do you check the quality of something an AI produced, when there’s no answer key to grade against?
Vandalizer 4.8 has just released: Here are the major changes Your Knowledge Bases Are More Reliable PDFs now upload and process correctly every time — no more silent failures. Answers also come with clickable citations so you can see exactly where they came from. And if a question isn’t covered by your documents, the assistant…
Vandalizer v4.5.0 Released
July 9, 2026
11am PDT
Technical questions for Vandalizer
Research administration is risk-averse on purpose. The work navigates federal regulations, sponsor-specific terms, institutional policies, and audit trails that survive personnel changes by years. RAs have been trained well, and the training has stuck: when in doubt, slow down; when the rule is unclear, ask; when the answer is unverifiable, do not submit. That posture is not a deficit to be retrained. It is an asset the institution already has, and it should be respected as such.