Artificial intelligence (AI) has long captured public interest, evolving from early experimental machines into the powerful systems used today. One of the earliest AI machines was created in 1950. Theseus, a small robotic machine created by Claude Shannon, could navigate simple mazes and remember their layouts.
Theseus ran on just 40 floating point operations (FLOPs), an amount that is miniscule to current AI models that require exponentially more computing power often measured in billions of petaFLOPs, peta denoting one quadrillion. Such progress took a short amount of time to achieve, as many of the most significant developments in AI have occurred within the past few years.
The University of California, Irvine is a contributor in these developments with its own AI system, ZotGPT. Following advances in AI models, such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, UCI faculty began developing a system to take part in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence in the summer of 2023.
“We spent a couple of weeks as a work group looking through various platforms at the time,” ZotGPT Director Sarkis Daglian told New University. “We did really basic rudimentary reviews, and ChatGPT was the thing back then. When you talked about AI in 2023, you [were] talking about ChatGPT.”
As AI rapidly developed, ZotGPT emerged as a bridge between technological innovation and academia. AI started to be seen as a practical tool, rather than a distant technology, with students beginning to use it in their studies, daily academic tasks and jobs.
“We wanted to be a university that helped our students place themselves very competitively in an ever changing, evolving, difficult job market,” Daglian told New University.
ZotGPT also helps address financial barriers to AI tools in the classroom. Some AI models, such as ChatGPT, can cost up to $200 per month for advanced features like priority Codex, an advanced AI powered coding software. By offering free access to students, ZotGPT helps reduce these barriers and allows more equal access to AI resources.
“Not every student can afford to pay $20 an AI times whatever number of AIs there are,” Daglian told New University. “We set up this platform — [with] the best models, the largest contact windows — free of charge to the campus.”
This policy aligns with UCI’s commitment to supporting students with financial needs. Campus services, such as ZotGPT and the UCI Basic Needs center, reflect broader efforts to reduce economic barriers students may face in the classroom.
“As a first-gen campus and a minority-serving institution, there’s a lot of students out there, who, like Sarkis mentioned, can’t afford multiple subscriptions to try and test out what models work best for them or experiment them for class or career prep, and through ZotGPT students, can do that,” Xanat Hernandez, the communications director of the Office of Information Technology and a key contributor to ZotGPT, told New University.
ZotGPT offers several AI language models. One of the most widely used is Anthropic, a frontier AI model configured so that the information entered into the system remains within UCI’s network and is not sold, shared or used to train outside third-party systems.
“It is more secure, and that includes your chats not being monitored by faculty and staff,” Hernandez told New University. “Students will come and say ‘Hey, I know you’re saying that it’s private, but is it really?’ and I’m always saying, ‘Yes… it falls under the same kind of regulations as your email.’”
After initial challenges introducing the new technology and organizing the system on campus, ZotGPT now provides a range of services, including chatbots, creator chats and tools for faculty and researchers. The ZotGPT team continues to plan for future developments of the platform.
“Imagine having an AI assistant that’s customized to you, that knows about you, that is able to hook into all those things seamlessly,” Daglian told New University. “That is the future.”
Konstantin Diatlov is a Features Staff Writer for the winter 2026 quarter. He can be reached at kdiatlov@uci.edu.
Edited by Aditya Biswas and Noor Dhillon
