Events / Faculty Panel: “AI and the Humanities”
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Faculty Panel: “AI and the Humanities”

March 1, 2024
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
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Knight Library Browsing Room, 1501 Kincaid St., Eugene, OR 97403

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field which combines computer science and robust datasets to enable problem solving. The sub-fields of machine learning and deep learning are frequently mentioned in conjunction with AI. These disciplines are comprised of AI algorithms that seek to create systems which make predictions or classifications based on input data.

Over the years, AI has gone through many cycles of hype, but the advent and rapid proliferation of Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence that can produce images and text, like ChatGPT) seems to mark a turning point. The applications for this technology are growing every day, and the possibilities are continually revealed. But as the hype around the use of AI takes off, conversations around ethics become critically important.

AI-generated text, images, and videos can be used to mislead and skew the truth.Algorithms are generally written by human beings. When writing code, the beliefs, values, and assumptions of that human are baked into the way the code is written and structured. AI picks up and replicates those biases.

How does this powerful technology impact truth, trust and democracy; safety and security; and privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties?

The Oregon Humanities Center will present a panel “AI and the Humanities” on Friday, March 1, 2024 at 3 p.m. in the Knight Library Browsing Room. Three UO humanities scholars with extensive expertise in the philosophy of AI, computation, digital humanities, information politics, and data ethics will engage, through perspectives rooted in the humanities, the challenges that AI and other data-driven technologies increasingly present today.

The panel features Ramón Alvarado, assistant professor of Philosophy and Data Science Initiative, the Data Ethics coordinator, and author of Simulating Science: Computer Simulations as Scientific Instruments (2023); Mattie Burkert, associate professor of English, director of the Minor in Digital Humanities, the interim director of the New Media and Culture Certificate, and the Principal Investigator and Project Director for the London Stage Database; and Colin Koopman, professor of Philosophy, author of How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person (2019), and the project lead of the Our Data, Our Selves web project.

This event will be livestreamed.