Is it possible to enlist artificial intelligence (AI) ethically, equitably and in the service of justice? And what is the role of the humanities in this pursuit? The Mellon Foundation has awarded $1.3 million to Emory and partners at Clark Atlanta University, Georgia Institute of Technology and the DataedX Group to explore these questions through the creation of the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI (AIAI) Network.
“If we are going to imagine more just and equitable uses of AI, we will need humanities scholars at the design table with technical researchers,” says Lauren Klein, the project’s principal investigator (PI). Klein serves as Winship Distinguished Research Professor of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods at Emory College of Arts and Sciences.
The AIAI network will foster research that blends humanistic ways of thinking with cutting-edge, machine-learning methods. Its goal is to showcase how Atlanta can serve as a model and national hub for work at the intersection of AI, ethics and social justice.
“The AIAI network is a particularly exciting collaboration in that it’s founded in a metropolitan city where 48% of the population is Black,” says Brandeis Marshall, CEO of DataedX and co-PI on the project. “Our work is keenly influenced by the known AI harms impacting Black people and other historically excluded groups in this city.”
Other project co-PIs are Rico Chapman, assistant dean of arts and sciences at Clark Atlanta and founding director of the Center for Africana Digital Humanities, and Carl DiSalvo, associate professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech.
Steering committee members include Emory’s Ben Miller, executive editor of Atlanta Studies and associate teaching professor of technical writing and digital humanities, and assistant professor of English Dan Sinykin, co-founder of the Post 45 Data Collective. André Brock, founding director of the PREACH Lab and associate professor in…
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