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ºÚ°µ±¬ÁÏÍø is expanding its locally hosted artificial intelligence system, BengalBot, after receiving a $300,000, two-year grant through the Accelerate Idaho AI Innovation Awards, with the project's leaders framing it as a chance to show AI can support people rather than replace them.

The project is led by Paul Bodily, an associate professor of computer science, and Jack Bradley, a clinical instructor in industrial cybersecurity engineering technology, who serve as co-principal investigators. 

Large language models, the technology behind tools like ChatGPT, are known to stumble on tasks like precise math and logic puzzles, and they can confidently state false information. 

Bodily said Redux's Model Context Protocol, or MCP, acts as a connector that lets the AI hand those kinds of problems off to tools better suited to solve them.

"My job is to build a bridge between the large language model and the system that is good at those kinds of problems," Bodily said.

Bradley said one of the biggest draws of building an in-house system is control, which commercial tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude don't offer.

"One of the big limitations of a lot of these commercial off-the-shelf products is we have very little control over how these tools function," Bradley said.

The grant funds three main efforts. The first embeds BengalBot into ºÚ°µ±¬ÁÏÍø's Applied AI Certificate and its new bachelor's degree in artificial intelligence sciences, giving 50 to 75 students annually hands-on experience building and auditing AI tools.

 The second is a writing assistant built into Canvas, designed to give feedback on structure and grammar rather than write papers for students, with built-in referrals to the ºÚ°µ±¬ÁÏÍø Writing Center when a student needs more help than the AI can offer.

The third builds partners with ºÚ°µ±¬ÁÏÍø's School of Performing Arts on a tool called the Stage Hub, meant to ease the administrative load on student stage managers who juggle rehearsal schedules, costume fittings and cast contact information for productions.

Bradley said the theater partnership matters beyond logistics.

"We're not trying to automate anybody out of a job," Bradley said, adding the goal is to show  that the technology can eliminate time spent on logistical tasks and have more time for creative work instead.  

The application also outlines several safeguards. All data will be hosted locally on ºÚ°µ±¬ÁÏÍø-controlled servers, with oversight from campus IT and network security staff. 

The writing assistant will undergo an accessibility review and a bias audit before expanding beyond its first group of students, and English professor Abraham Romney will review a sample of its feedback each semester. 

No tool moves into student-facing use without passing an internal testing benchmark, according to the application.

Project leaders point to Idaho National Laboratory, which draws more ºÚ°µ±¬ÁÏÍø graduates than any other Idaho university, as evidence that the skills students gain — auditing AI outputs and enforcing data boundaries — align directly with what regional technical employers need.

All source code and curriculum materials built through the grant will be released publicly under an open license, and the team plans to test the writing assistant at another Idaho institution before wider release. 

Bodily said he expects a theater pilot and limited use in English classes by fall 2027, following a spring semester focused on building and purchasing the necessary hardware.

According to the project's grant application, roughly half the funding will go toward a new high-performance server installed and maintained by College of Technology students, with the rest largely covering student wages, including a student developer position on the Redux project for two years.

Bradley said what he's most excited about isn't the technology itself, but who's building it together.

"It's relatively unheard of for such a multidisciplinary team of both STEM and Humanities faculty members to collaborate on a project like this," Bradley said. "I think the interdisciplinary nature of what we're doing here is really unique  and exciting."