Events
Fall 2023
Friday October 6, 2023 Special Virtual Event is
now available as a video archive
(see links to videos below)
Critical AI Literacy in a Time of Chatbots:
A Public Symposium for
Educators, Writers, and Citizens
Critical AI @ Rutgers, in collaboration with Katie Conrad (University of Kansas), invite you to view the recordings of this special event. Whether you are an educator, a writer, or a citizen, developing Critical AI literacy is a great way to empower yourself, your students, and colleagues about new technologies.
OPENING REMARKS
Rebecca Walkowitz (Dean of Humanities)
Watch the recording here
I: Critical AI Literacy: What is it and Why Do We Need it?
Watch the recording here
Panelists:
Matthew Stone (Computer Science, Rutgers)
Antonio Hamilton (Writing Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Lauren M.E. Goodlad (English/Critical AI, Rutgers)
Moderator: Maha Bali (Center for Learning and Teaching, American University in Cairo)
II: Teaching Critical AI Literacy: Advice and Perspectives
Watch the recording here
Panelists:
Nicholas Provenzano (Technology Integrator and Makerspace Director at University Liggett School)
Latrise P. Johnson (English, University of Alabama)
Leslie Allison + Tiffany DeRewal (Rowan U)
Daniel Estrada (Humanities, New Jersey Institute of Tech)
Moderator: Anna Mills (MLA-CCCC Task Force on Writing and AI/English, Cañada College)
KEYNOTE INTERVIEW w/ BRIAN MERCHANT, Tech Columnist, LA Times and
author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech
Watch the recording here
Interview with Brian Merchant (LA Times) conducted by
Michael Szalay (English, University of California, Irvine)
and Evie Shockley (English, Rutgers; author of suddenly we)
Moderator: Serap Firat (Visiting Research Scholar / UC Berkeley)
KEYNOTE PANEL: What’s next?
Watch the recording here
Keynote Panelists:
Kathryn Conrad (English, University of Kansas)
Amba Kak (Executive Director, AI Now)
Moderator: Jane Rosenzweig (Writing Program, Harvard)
DESIGN JUSTICE AI
Critical AI is planning for our DESIGN JUSTICE AI Global Humanities Institute in July 2024. Click here to learn more.
We are also looking forward to the first issue of Critical AI 1:1.2, a special issue on DATA WORLDS, co-edited by Katherine Bode and Lauren M.E. Goodlad, due out from Duke UP, any day now, and have begun to publish “SNEAK PREVIEWS” of Critical AI 2.1, a special issue on Large Language Models and “Generative AI” co-edited by Lauren M. E. Goodlad and Matthew Stone
Spring 2023
“AI FUTURES: An Interdisciplinary Conversation on Large Language Models and the Future of Human Writing”
Thurs. February 16, 5:00PM ET
Virtual Roundtable with Kyle Booten (English, University of Connecticut), Sam Bowman (Data Science/Linguistics/CS, NYU – Visiting Researcher, Anthropic AI), Liz Losh (Rhetoric/American Studies, William & Mary), and Nasrin Mostafazadeh (AI Researcher, Co-Founder Verneek).
Working from interdisciplinary standpoints in academia and industry, our roundtablers take up this topic in the wake of OpenAI’s recent release of ChatGPT, and its banning by NYC schools. Join our experts as they discuss the underlying technology of LLMs, their potential uses and abuses, and their likely impact on the future of human writing.
Moderator/Introducer: Carter Mathes (English, Rutgers)
Check out the video, and look out for a blog by Anna Mills (English, College of Marin). (See also Mills’ co-authored blog post, “Adapting College Writing for the Age of Large Language Models.”
“Victorian ‘Artificial Intelligence’: A Call to Arms”
Thurs. April 6, 4:00PM ET
In-Person Location: Rutgers Academic Building WW, CCA Seminar Room 6051
A hybrid (in-person/Zoom) panel and discussion, which will feature presentations by Sophia Hsu (CUNY), Pamela K. Gilbert (University of Florida), and Lauren M.E. Goodlad (Rutgers). This panel discussion offers an informative “way in” to a topic of urgency while connecting to ongoing research questions for humanists across disciplines. As “AI” increasingly dominates strategic initiatives in teaching and research, humanists and interpretive social scientists must join the growing conversation over this so-called fourth industrial revolution.
Co-organized with the Rutgers British Studies Center
Respondent: Meredith Martin (Center for Digital Humanities, Princeton)
Moderator/Introducer: Anand Sarwate (Electrical & Computer Engineering, Rutgers).
Check out the video and Jacob Romanow‘s blog of this event!
Workshop on “The Ethics of AI Ethics. A Constructive Critique” with Jan-Christoph Heilinger
Thurs. May 4, 5:00PM ET
Virtual workshop with Jan-Christoph Heilinger (Center for Population-Level Bioethics, Rutgers) on his current research. The paper undertakes an ethical analysis and a constructive critique of the current practice of AI ethics. It identifies conceptual, as well as substantive and procedural challenges arising in the field of AI ethics, and it outlines strategies to address them. The ultimate goal of the paper consists in supporting an adequate normative assessment of the opportunities and challenges in the field of AI and AI-based technologies, so that conditions can be formulated under which such technologies would actually improve human lives and living together.
Co-organized with the Rutgers Center for Population-Level Bioethics.
Facilitator: Nir Eyal (Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Center for Population-Level Bioethics, Rutgers)
Reading: “The Ethics of AI Ethics. A Constructive Critique”
The event video is password protected at the request of Dr. Heilinger. For permission to view, write to criticalai@sas.rutgers.edu.
Fall 2022
Virtual Lecture/Discussion with Gary Marcus (co-author Rebooting AI)
“TOWARD A FOUNDATION FOR ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE (AGI)”
Tues. November 29, 5:00PM ET
Marcus, co-author of Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust and author of the substack AI We Can Trust, joins us to discuss large pretrained language models. Examples such as GPT-3 and PaLM have generated enormous enthusiasm and are capable of producing remarkably fluent language. But they have also been criticized on many grounds, and described as “stochastic parrots.” Are they adequate as a basis for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and, if not, what would a better foundation for general intelligence look like?
Co-organized with Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science
Moderator/Introducer: John McGann (RuCCS)
Check out the video, and a blog on the event is coming soon.
In-Person/Virtual Lecture/Discussion with Vukosi Marivate (University of Pretoria)
“AFRICAN NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING (NLP): Looking Back to the Future”
Thurs. December 15 10:30AM-12PM ET
Location: CoRE 301 (Busch Campus) and on Zoom
Marivate, Chair of Data Science and leader of the Data Science for Social Impact group, will describe his work to ensure that African languages and local language tasks “count” on the African continent and beyond. Such research into African NLP is part of an important multidisciplinary conversation. As large language models continue to power the dominant paradigm in conversational “AI,” these technologies focus on English (especially as spoken in North America) and other “western” languages and populations.
Co-organized with the Department of Computer Science, DIMACS and the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice
Moderator/Introducer: Matthew Stone (Computer Science, Rutgers)
Check out the video and Eleni Coundouriotis’s blog of this event!
For more information on and video recordings of our past events click here!