Tim Trappen

Tim Trappen, Robert Keßler, Roland Pabel et al.

Due to rising demands for Artificial Inteligence (AI) inference, especially in higher education, novel solutions utilising existing infrastructure are emerging. The utilisation of High-Performance Computing (HPC) has become a prevalent approach for the implementation of such solutions. However, the classical operating model of HPC does not adapt well to the requirements of synchronous, user-facing dynamic AI application workloads. In this paper, we propose our solution that serves LLMs by integrating vLLM, Slurm and Kubernetes on the supercomputer \textit{RAMSES}. The initial benchmark indicates that the proposed architecture scales efficiently for 100, 500 and 1000 concurrent requests, incurring only an overhead of approximately 500 ms in terms of end-to-end latency.

Leon Hannig, Annika Bush, Meltem Aksoy et al.

As the use of LLM chatbots by students and researchers becomes more prevalent, universities are pressed to develop AI strategies. One strategy that many universities pursue is to customize pre-trained LLM as-a-service (LLMaaS). While most studies on LLMaaS chatbots prioritize technical adaptations, we focus on psychological effects of user-salient customizations, such as interface changes. We assume that such customizations influence users' perception of the system and are therefore important in guiding safe and appropriate use. In a field study, we examine how students and employees (N = 526) at a German university perceive and use their institution's customized LLMaaS chatbot compared to ChatGPT. Participants using both systems (n = 116) reported greater trust, higher perceived privacy and less experienced hallucinations with their university's customized LLMaaS chatbot in contrast to ChatGPT. We discuss theoretical implications for research on calibrated trust, and offer guidance on the design and deployment of LLMaaS chatbots.