Dr. Karamjit S Gill
Professor Emeritus, University of Brighton, UK,
Editor-in-chief, AI&Society: journal of knowledge, culture and communication (Springer)
Karamjit S Gill is Professor Emeritus, University of Brighton (UK), Founding Editor of AI&Society Journal (Springer), Visiting Professor at the universities of Wales (UK), Urbino (Italy), Waterford Institute of Technology (Ireland), Beijing Academy of Soft Technology (China), and Symbiotic Network-IIT Mumbai, Delhi University, Arizona State University and UCLA (USA), Universities at Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Cybernetics Network, Santiago (Chile) and ATA Lima (Peru). Karamjit is the Founding Chair of the International INSYTE-CRL laboratory at Waterford Institute of Technology, Republic of Ireland, and is a member of the Advisory Panel of the Artificial Intelligence for Societal Good Challenge of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). He is High Level member of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2023. Over the years he has directed cross-cultural research networks, including EU-India cross-cultural innovation network (EU); Europe-Japan network on human-centred systems; European postgraduate and doctoral research network in human centred systems (EU), Knowledge, culture and artificial intelligence network (EU); New Technology and Adult Literacy (EU); Computer Aided Animated Arts Theatre (CAAAT) Project and the Europe-Japan human centred systems (NTT Data, Japan-1990s); Culture, Language and Artificial Intelligence (COST-EC/Sweden). He has been the founding Series Editor of the Human Centred Systems Society Book Series (Springer) He is also actively involved in the Community-University Partnership in social mentoring encompassing art, music and craft therapeutic environment and co-production. At Cambridge, he is involved with the Interdisciplinary Performance Research Network, AI Community, and Cambridge Community Arts. At the European level, he is collaborating with PROMISE.eu, a European enterprise. Karamjit is a keynote member of the WSIS Forum 2023.
Plenary talk abstract:
Given that Open AI (ChatGPT, LLMS) offers the possibility to aggregate human cultural production, and AI provides huge potential of benefits to society, ranging from agriculture, medicine, health care, education and learning, workplace innovation, and poverty elimination.
Then why are we now facing a cultural crisis of embedding AI in societies? In other words, what is it about the engineering of predictive algorithms which drive social platforms that shapes our concerns about conspiracy theories, security, privacy, prejudice, and identity crisis. The talk explores this question and asks: how do we mould socially responsible AI tools for societal benefits whilst mitigating the danger of falling into the trap of Faustian seduction in which we bargain our soul with the machine in exchange for getting what we desire. During the 1980s the challenge and concern was how to mitigate the consequence of turning ‘judgment’ to ‘calculation’ and now the 2020s challenge and concern is about the impact and implication of turning the human (outer-inner) into data. Some of the key issues we face are: How do we design AI tools that align with societal goals such as those of trust and trustworthiness? Can the idea of the ethical machine drive towards taming ethical and moral dilemmas of alignment, beyond the Cartesian belief in human-AI co-evolution. Could a human-machine symbiotic framework as in Buber’s conception of I-IT and I-Thou symbiosis and Shiva’s Dance of harmony provide an alternative to the Faustian bargain? We then ask whether present day followers of the Cartesian faith allow themselves to heed Weizenbaum's warning that humans and computers belong to separate and incommensurable realms.