At the University of Wisconsin, the humanities department is stepping into the AI world with a new initiative. Backed by a $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the College of Letters and Science is launching the Center for Humanistic Inquiry into AI and Uncertainty, according to the CL&S website.
According to CL&S, this center will serve as a collaborative hub for scholars within history, media studies, philosophy and information ethics with the goal of exploring AI’s impact. It will host annual calls for UW faculty fellows, foster collaboration across several programs on campus and engage in urgent conversations that support scholars grappling with technological shifts, according to an Institute for Research in the Humanities announcement.
Associate Dean for arts and humanities Grant Nelsestuen said he plays a key role in uniting scholars working on AI from a humanities perspective and managing the institutional support to establish the center.
“I’ve helped bring together all the amazing scholars that we have who are working on these questions from the perspective of the humanities,” Nelsestuen said. “It’s a collaborative hub. It convenes, it applies resources, and it also connects.”
Connection and collaboration are especially crucial as AI becomes increasingly powerful and prevalent in everyday life, according to The New York Times.
The committee of faculty experts, ranging from philosophers to information ethicists, will guide the university as they work on projects that explore the theme of AI and uncertainty.
The strength of UW’s humanities plays a central role in shaping the development of these technologies, according to the IRH announcement.
The university is home to one of the oldest history of science programs in the country, alongside nationally recognized departments in computer science, statistics and philosophy.
Given the size of the campus, forming connections can present challenges. The center aims to address this by establishing pathways for collaboration, according to IRH.
“We also wanted to create a center that was open to the possibility of new potentials of expressing human creativity,” Nelsestuen said. “That’s where the uncertainty comes into play.”
Assistant professor of history and integrated liberal studies Devin Kennedy said AI raises questions across various departments at UW and that there is no single answer to how it will impact the university. Ultimately, he hopes that the center will help address any misconceptions about AI and build a more public understanding of it.
Kennedy is one of the center’s steering committee members who has helped shape the center as a historian of science and has also been involved in scale grant writing efforts. He said his current research examines how computer scientists define and validate knowledge and what that means for the future of AI.
“I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to come up with ideas that will give people ways of thinking about artificial intelligence that is somewhere between the kind of overhype that we see and the alarming [rhetoric] we see on the other end of the spectrum,” Kennedy said.
One of the center’s most visible contributions will be its annual White Papers, which Kennedy described as comprehensive research documents that discuss issues in the field based on the year.
Similarly, he said it will discuss issues in artificial intelligence from a humanistic perspective, and there will also be time capsules about how people were thinking about AI at a particular moment in time.
Faculty hope this work will lead to new publications, long-term partnerships and conferences to expand the center and address the development and deployment of these technologies, it announced.
This center also has plans to engage students across campus. Though there is no direct undergraduate involvement yet, the IRH lists several opportunities for student participation that are already available.
Kennedy said the center’s interdisciplinary structure is designed to foster more exchange between humanities and STEM students. He added that the center aims to create spaces where students from non-technical backgrounds can engage with AI critically, while also encouraging collaboration with computer science and engineering students.
Graduate students from across the humanities and social sciences have participated in monthly seminars on artificial intelligence hosted by the Center for the Humanities. Undergraduate students, however, are stepping into AI by joining campus groups like the Wisconsin AI Safety Initiative.
Grant Nelsestuen said he hopes undergraduate research fellows will participate in meetings and contribute to the White Paper as a way of gaining student involvement.
Looking ahead, the Center for Humanistic Inquiry into AI and Uncertainty hopes to extend its impact beyond campus and expand opportunities for research and public engagement, according to the IRH.
As a result, UW is positioning itself at the forefront of AI research, they said in an announcement.
According to the IRH, the center states its mission as becoming a collaborative hub for gathering people, ideas and resources from across the UW community to intervene in scholarly and public debates around the uncertainty of AI technologies.
“We have more agency in determining what the AI revolution will look like,” Kennedy said.
