Author: TheConversation

By Archon Fung, Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government, Harvard Kennedy School; and Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard University Could organizations use artificial intelligence language models such as ChatGPT to induce voters to behave in specific ways? Senator Josh Hawley asked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman this question in a May 16, 2023, U.S. Senate hearing on artificial intelligence. Altman replied that he was indeed concerned that some people might use language models to manipulate, persuade and engage in one-on-one interactions with voters. Altman did not elaborate, but he might have had something like this scenario in mind....

By Pawan Jain, Assistant Professor of Finance, West Virginia University Artificial Intelligence-powered tools, such as ChatGPT, have the potential to revolutionize the efficiency, effectiveness and speed of the work humans do. And this is true in financial markets as much as in sectors like health care, manufacturing and pretty much every other aspect of our lives. I have been researching financial markets and algorithmic trading for 14 years. While AI offers lots of benefits, the growing use of these technologies in financial markets also points to potential perils. A look at Wall Street’s past efforts to speed up trading...

By Saurabh Bagchi, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University For some people, the term “black box” brings to mind the recording devices in airplanes that are valuable for postmortem analyses if the unthinkable happens. For others it evokes small, minimally outfitted theaters. But black box is also an important term in the world of artificial intelligence. AI black boxes refer to AI systems with internal workings that are invisible to the user. You can feed them input and get output, but you cannot examine the system’s code or the logic that produced the output. Machine learning is...

By David B. Parker, Professor of History, Kennesaw State University A news story was published recently about a Black cemetery in Buckhead, a prosperous Atlanta community. The cemetery broke ground almost two centuries ago, in 1826, as the graveyard of Piney Grove Baptist Church. The church has been gone for decades; the cemetery now sits on the property of a townhouse development. It is overgrown, with most of its 300-plus graves unmarked. The article described how some of the buried’s descendants and family members are trying to get the property owner to clean up and take care of the...

By Laura E. Alexander, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Goldstein Family Community Chair in Human Rights, University of Nebraska Omaha Many religious traditions preach the need to care for strangers. But what happens when caring for the stranger comes into conflict with government policy? After Title 42 restrictions at the U.S. border ended on May 11, 2023, debates about immigration have heated up again – focused mostly on reform, border security or refugees’ needs. But the treatment of immigrants is deeply intertwined with religious freedom as well. As a scholar of religious ethics who studies immigration, I am interested...