DBASSE Hosts Second Webinar in 2024 Spring Hauser Webinar Series

On July 25, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE) hosted the second webinar in their Hauser 2024 Spring Webinar Series titled, The Hauser Policy Impact Fund Webinar Series: Navigating the Era of Artificial Intelligence Part 2: The Role of Social Sciences. This webinar hosted a diverse panel of researchers on the importance of social science research while developing artificial intelligence (AI) and the role of policymakers in understanding AI’s potential benefits and harms.

The panelists focused on AI as a tool to enhance human capabilities, the context in which AI is deployed, and how AI can address diversity challenges and improved learning for traditionally marginalized groups. The panelists focused on specific contexts or studies in which AI was deployed to enhance human intelligence and learning capacities in legal offices, classrooms, controlled experiments, and more. The panelists used these findings to suggest policy implications and recommend that AI needs to be tested in low stakes situations before being implemented, and that “AI literacy” should be implemented in educational settings. Further, they emphasized the importance of human contributions to AI and called for the continued funding of AI research by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

This article was contributed by COSSA Intern Paige Kirkham.