The transdisciplinary AI Strategies team examines how cultural values and institutional polices shape AI infrastructures in national and global contexts.
In May, a cohort of 20 selected AI and Tech fellows gathered at Mason Square for George Mason University’s AI Strategies first AI and Tech Policy Summer Institute. The event, which was also sponsored by Mason’s Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, the Schar School of Policy and Government, the Institute for Digital Innovation, and the Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnership, brought together scholars, industry experts, government officials, and civil society activists from multiple academic disciplines, backgrounds, and research interests.
The cohort convened to introduce Mason master’s and doctoral students in the social sciences, humanities, and select professional schools to the fundamental engineering concepts about how artificial intelligence (AI) works, policy and regulatory frameworks that are evolving to govern AI, debates on AI ethics, and issues surrounding security, economic, and human rights concerns from local to global levels.
“AI now impacts every kind of work and even play, from writing an email to ordering a book,” said Schar School of Policy and Government Distinguished University Professor J. P. Singh, who leads the AI Strategies team. “The knowledge from the summer institute is important for students who will eventually be responsible for using and controlling AI, which is already considered an existential threat in some quarters.
Researchers from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy (i3p) played a key role in the project, from the pre-proposal stage to the present, providing insight on the ethical, social, and policy implications of emerging technologies. At the institute, i3p Acting Director Jesse Kirkpatrick, a member of the AI Strategies team, presented “Responsible Innovation and National Security,” which addressed existing efforts, challenges, and opportunities in responsible AI, and drew on his involvement in responsible AI research, policy, and practice across such sectors as academia, industry, and government.