Facilitating AI dialogue across natural science, ethics, and social work

AI is a technology with rippling systems-level effects. Collaborating across diverse disciplines is the only way to begin to understand the full implications of our AI design decisions.

This is the focus of Wednesday’s Advancing Research community workshop on artificial intelligence, hosted by Rosenfeld Media (curated by Jemma Ahmed and Chris Geison).

Last week, I met with our workshop panelists to learn more about the approaches they’re taking to AI in natural science, ethics, and social work. I heard questions such as:

• Who or what isn’t being included in our models?

• How do we ensure we aren’t overlooking valuable insight from edge cases?

• What can we do to counteract the “people-pleasing nature” of LLMs to avoid bias?

The discussion emphasized that AI’s effects are broad and profound, from the intrapersonal to the ecological. This can have troubling implications for science, for justice, and even for our users’ mental health.

But there are also many reasons to be hopeful about our AI-enabled future, as responsible AI empowers us to solve problems at a previously unfathomable scale.

To hear more from workshop panelists David Womack, Nishanshi Shukla, and Rachael Dietkus, join us this Wednesday (9/18) at 4PM EDT.