Elizabeth Callaway, assistant professor in the Department of English and affiliated faculty in the Environmental Humanities Graduate Program, and Rebekah Cummings, director of Digital Matters at the Marriott Library, have received an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, NEH, to hold a three-week Summer Institute for Higher Education at the University of Utah.

The institute, Humanities Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence, will bring together 30 higher education faculty from across the country to learn how humanities research and teaching can help promote more responsible AI.

“The University of Utah has not hosted a Summer Institute in many years,” said Isabel Moreira, associate dean for research in the College of Humanities. “This is a significant achievement for our college and really signals the cutting-edge work at the intersection of humanities and artificial intelligence that our faculty are leading. We are thrilled to see this collaboration on such an innovative and timely project.”

Inspired by the stunning acceleration of AI innovation that was accompanied by a no less stunning series of public, ongoing AI failures in the realms of bias, privacy, surveillance, polarization and mental health, the two faculty researchers have been working on AI for years. Callaway’s research on AI and the environment led to her selection as an awardee of the National Humanities Center’s Program in Responsible AI in 2022. Since then, she has developed three courses for undergraduates on various elements of responsible AI.

Cummings’ work on censorship and misinformation in the digital age has been featured in keynotes, articles and various undergraduate workshops in addition to public media appearances and awards. Her library advocacy work has been recognized with the 2023 American Civil Liberties Union Torch of Freedom Award, the 2021 Utah Library Association Legislative Award for Excellence in Political Affairs, and the 2019 American Library Association Gerald Hodges Intellectual Freedom Chapter Relations Award.

Held next summer, this institute will help participants gain a deeper understanding of the technological workings and societal implications of artificial intelligence. By centering readings, discussion and hands-on experimentation, the institute will equip participants with foundational knowledge about AI, enabling them to use their humanities competencies to carry out urgently needed research on AI development, regulation and impact as well as teach the next generation of tech developers, policymakers and concerned citizens.

“The Humanities-AI research community has been expanding rapidly over the past five years due in part to scholar-innovators like Lizzie Callaway who begin with the understanding that AI is best grasped in relation to human intelligence and human history as an extension of the human, which has a capacity beyond our own,” said Hollis Robbins, dean of the College of Humanities.

The institute will draw upon the University of Utah’s deep expertise in AI research. It will take place in Digital Matters within the Marriott Library, the university’s dedicated hub for digital scholarship, and will feature guest experts from around campus. The institute will also leverage Utah’s unique resources outside the university with field trips to Adobe, the Kennecott copper mine and Antelope Island. By the end of the institute, they plan to launch an exhibit at Marriott Library featuring participant research into responsible AI.

“The Marriott Library is pleased to host this Summer Institute at Digital Matters. By bringing together library and humanities expertise on responsible AI and the broader information environment in which AI sits, I am convinced that the Summer Institute will be a resounding success,” said Sarah Shreeves, dean of the Marriott Library and university librarian. “The exhibit that will launch at the end of the Institute will be an excellent opportunity for the whole community to learn from the participants.”

One of the major goals of the summer institute is to widen efforts to foster responsible AI by considering more than just the technological core of AI. Participants will examine the broader contexts that incentivize certain kinds of AI, the complex world full of preexisting inequalities into which AI is deployed and the historical contexts of datasets.

Reckless AI is not simply a technological problem but a cultural one.

“Tragedy is a matter of human recklessness and human frailty; it stands to reason that any future AI tragedies will also be a matter of human weakness,” Robbins said.

Without examining the humans and systems that generate the raw material for AI training and comprise the world in which AI operates, we will not be able to build thoughtful, creative, responsible AI that is geared toward human self-realization and natural flourishing.