The Advancing AI & Tech Ethics Symposium was hosted in the Sun Room, South Ballroom and Room 2630 of the Memorial Union on Thursday.
According to Annemarie Butler, associate professor for the Department of Philosophy, many of the event’s breakout sessions focused on social and cognitive biases in AI.
Butler explained that due to developers in Silicon Valley usually being white males, social biases get embedded into the algorithms.
“Since Google Image Recognition has been around, it has had trouble with people with dark complexions,” Butler said. “It classifies black human beings as gorillas, which is outrageous.”
Butler explained that cognitive biases are places where we, as humans, make mistaken judgments.
Eric York, an associate professor in the English department, highlighted a recent business school study during his breakout session. The study showed that when business teams used AI and it gave the right result, they trusted AI, but when it produced the wrong result, they also trusted AI.
“That’s a problem because what you want is AI to be an assistant but not to be calling the shots,” Butler said. “So there are worries about ‘How do we ensure that? How do we eliminate errors?’”
This is the second year of the conference, but the noticeable change to this year’s event is that students were also invited to attend.
“Students in particular are the ground level and are the most likely to adopt these tools quickly to find new uses,” Butler said. “I think that’s one of the goals for this conference, is to bring ourselves as a community of students, faculty and staff and think about what kind of community do we want, and how can we use AI to achieve it?”
Jayden Bollig, a sophomore in accounting, attended the event as part of a class assignment, but left with ideas of how she can implement AI into her life.
“I think a big takeaway is that AI is relevant in the world, and we need to be learning about it… especially how it impacts our education,” Bollig said. “I think it is important to apply it in ways that it is not overstepping how AI should be used.”
The symposium was hosted by the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and the Department of English. To learn more about the speakers, click here.
