This story was written by Danna Lorch for MIT’s Schwarzman College of Computing and is available online. An excerpt is below.
In 15 TED-Talk style presentations, MIT faculty discussed their pioneering research that incorporates social, ethical, and technical considerations and expertise, each supported by seed grants established by the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC), a cross-cutting initiative of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. The call for proposals last summer was met with nearly 70 applications. A committee with representatives from every school and the college at the Institute convened to select the winning projects that received up to $100,000 in funding.
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Using AI to increase civil discourse online
“Our research aims to address how people increasingly want to have a say in the organizations and communities they belong to,” Lily Tsai explained in a session on experiments in generative AI and the future of digital democracy. Tsai, Ford Professor of Political Science and director of the MIT Governance Lab, is conducting ongoing research with Alex Pentland, Toshiba Professor of Media Arts & Science, and a larger team.
Online deliberative platforms have recently been rising in popularity across the U.S. in both public and private sector settings. Tsai explained that with technology, it’s now possible for everyone to have a say —but doing so can be overwhelming or even feel unsafe. First, too much information is available, and secondly, online discourse has become increasingly “uncivil.”
The group focuses on “How we can build on existing technologies and improve them with rigorous, interdisciplinary research, and how we can innovate by integrating generative AI to enhance the benefits of online spaces for deliberation.” They have developed their own AI-integrated platform for deliberative democracy, DELiberation.io, and rolled out four initial modules. All studies have been in the lab so far, but they are also working on a set of forthcoming field studies, the first of which will be in partnership with the Government of the District of Columbia.
Tsai said to the audience, “If you take nothing else from this presentation, I hope that you’ll take away this — that we should all be demanding that technologies that are being developed are assessed to see if they have positive downstream outcomes, rather than just focusing on maximizing the number of users.”
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Photo by Sasha Rollinger.