Kick-off of some AI tools the Societal Analytics Lab makes available to FSW-VU researchers.
When: May 19th between 15:00 and 18:00 hrs.
Where: NU-5A47 with final drinks at NU-Lobby Campus Square.
Register: https://forms.office.com/e/uciB7nhjS5
Itinerary and locations
- 15:00 - 15:15 hrs [NU-5A47]: Reception
- 15:15 - 16:15 hrs [NU-5A47]: (Gen)AI’s impact on our thinking, language, and ethics by Dr. Katleen Gabriels
- 16:15 - 16:30 hrs [NU-5A47]: Break
- 16:30 - 17:30 hrs [NU-5A47]: Lab tools introduction
- 17:30 - 18:00 hrs [NU-Lobby Campus Square]: Drinks
(Gen)AI’s impact on our thinking, language, and ethics
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly being used for very personal and intimate occasions, such as writing wedding vows. In a Swiss church, one could confess to an AI Jesus, as part of the ‘Deus in Machina’ project. Developers of ‘AI therapists’, such as Youper, claim that AI therapy bots have ‘empathy’ and others claim that GPTs can have ‘emotional intelligence’.
In education, students use Generative AI to achieve a result with a ‘shortcut’, which means that crucial steps in their thinking and learning process are not taken. In Time Magazine, an American teacher announced to leave education because she spent more time giving feedback to AI-generated papers than to the students themselves, when grading assignments.
AI challenges us, especially now that it is increasingly entering the ‘human’ and ‘creative’ domain. But, can AI be creative? Is AI intelligent? What are the differences between human and artificial intelligence? What, if anything, gets lost if we can ‘outsource’ some of our writing and thinking to (Gen)AI?
In this talk, I will discuss these questions, their motivations, and possible consequences.
Dr. Katleen Gabriels is a moral philosopher and a philosopher of technology, specialised in computer ethics (e.g., AI; monitoring technology; VR). She is an associate professor of philosophy at Maastricht University. She researches the co-shaping of morality and computer technologies. From August 2020 to September 2024, she was the programme director of the interdisciplinary BA Digital Society. In December 2024, the Dutch research council (NWO) awarded her an Aspasia grant to study the co-shaping of morality and monitoring technologies in families. More information about her and her work can be found here.
Lab tools introduction
In this talk, Prof. Wouter van Atteveldt and Dr. Sofia Gil-Clavel will introduce the tools that the Societal Analytics Lab makes available to the Lab members. Then, Dr. Daniel Preciado and Dr. Johannes Gruber (both Lab members) will talk about how the tools facilitate their research.
