About Us
AI in Society
Understanding and Shaping the Future of AI to Benefit Everyone
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming a pervasive part of society. From computer-assisted medical procedures to automated financial systems, and from everyday appliances to autonomous vehicles, we are becoming increasingly more reliant on AI to aid decision-making and manage activities. In medical, financial, manufacturing, and many other industries, AI allows us to be more productive, efficient, and safe. The embeddedness of AI will certainly increase, but where, when, and especially how are today’s critical questions. Enmeshed in our social, political, and technological world, AI will shape socioeconomic structures and greatly impact everyone’s lives. We must understand how to design AI-enabled systems, so that verification and validation of their behavior is simple and straightforward. We may need oversight agents that monitor the ethics and safety of the AI system decisions, in real time, and take corrective action if behavior steps outside of societal expectations.
The R. L. Rabb Symposium on Embedding AI in Society was held February 18-19, 2021 and explored the integration of AI technologies and societal structures, with attention to issues of safety, privacy, and employment. Our keynote speakers, presenters, and participants challenged us to think more deeply and holistically about how we should prepare for an AI-infused future. This symposium, and the forthcoming special issue of AI & Society proceeding in part from it, will produce an archive of papers and presentations that will help shape society’s thoughts about the future of AI research and applications.
We look forward to NC State AI In Society’s continued leadership in fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, producing superior collaborative research, and charting the best paths forward for AI-empowered systems. We are engaging in research on topics including moral decision making, transparency and explicability of AI reasoning, the avoidance of bias, the search for fair outcomes, governance, trust, accountability, requirements elicitation, values-based designs, and public engagement. We investigate concerns of ethics across the system lifecycle, including eliciting stakeholder needs, developing risk models, and formulating regulations. We welcome your participation.