Artificial Intelligence

In the past few years, the technologies of artificial intelligence and machine learning have seemingly moved from the realm of science fiction and into our everyday lives. From autonomous vehicles to intelligent assistants like Siri and Alexa to the algorithmic systems of content moderation used by Twitter and Facebook, the growing integration of artificial agents into human social, economic, and political life has highlighted some pressing ethical dilemmas for users, designers, and regulators alike. How can we as human beings make informed and ethical decisions about the highly complex, often to the point of being impenetrable, AI-based decision systems that many of us are increasingly reliant upon? In some cases, AI ethics touches on fundamental questions of personhood, and on life-and-death decisions made in the context of war or medicine. But other, less dramatic but no less significant arenas, the questions about security, privacy, surveillance, social manipulation, financial stability, and equity, are no longer theoretical. Artificial intelligence has become a reality that citizens, technologists, and policy-makers must reckon with in the present, not some distant future.

Artificial Intelligence at IU

Indiana University offers a unique combination of depth and nearly unparalleled breadth in AI, including major research in AI and genomics, machine learning and computer vision (in partnership with Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane), connectome models of the human brain, early detection of Alzheimer's disease in human brain scans, and medical image analysis. The university offers a course in AI Ethics. In addition, its Emerging Areas of Research program recently funded a $2.5-million initiative to study connections between machine learning and human learning. The university has made major investments in AI technologies and is in the process of acquiring the state's first AI supercomputer. Learn more about IU's research impact in the field of AI.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, facial recognition, autonomous and sensor-equipped vehicles, and robotics

Convener(s): Nathan Ensmenger