As new know-how continues to increase its footprint throughout society, some researchers are elevating questions concerning the potential social and environmental influence of AI.
The College of Virginia’s Faculty of Information Science is partnering with Tamara Kneese and the Information and Society Analysis Institute to look at the social and environmental influence of AI.
The Nationwide Science Basis just lately awarded the challenge a two-year, $300,000 grant.
Working with the Information and Society Analysis Institute, Hicks and Reia will look at what results massive knowledge centres which might be constructed by AI corporations have on the bodily setting and group life within the areas during which they reside.
Issues raised concerning the social and environmental influence of AI
Whereas some AI builders are assessing the opposite potential impacts of this infrastructure, different considerations have acquired comparatively little consideration, together with these associated to digital waste and land, power, and water use.
The analysis group will work straight with affected communities to assist higher perceive the social and environmental influence of AI and make sure that their views are being heard and accounted for by governments as they formulate AI rules and insurance policies.
Utilizing participatory strategies, the challenge group will conduct interviews with stakeholders, organise workshops, and conduct pilot research.
These actions intention to develop frameworks for assessing AI’s influence on the setting and society primarily based on the experiences and data of these most affected.
Guaranteeing the accountable deployment of recent applied sciences
The grant is a part of NSF’s Responsible Design and Deployment of Technologies programme.
This initiative is offering greater than $18m of help to 44 multidisciplinary, multi-sector analysis groups throughout the nation.
This challenge will construct on work Hicks and Reia, the lead researchers, have accomplished lately.
Hicks, who joined the Faculty of Information Science in 2023, co-organised a convention this summer season with UVA historical past professor Erik Linstrum, the place consultants from a wide range of fields in academia and business submitted papers and shared their analysis on classes from historical past that may information our present approaches to coping with the social and environmental influence of AI.
A follow-up digital convention, which can be open to the general public, is deliberate for six December.
Reia, who got here to the Faculty of Information Science in 2021, additionally serves as college co-lead for the Karsh Institute’s Digital Know-how for Democracy Lab.
Earlier this 12 months, UVA’s Environmental Institute introduced it might fund a challenge co-led by Reia exploring environmental and digital rights points raised by the incorporation of massive knowledge techniques into cars.
