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After a visit to the University of Michigan’s Laboratory for Progress (Perceptive Robotics and Grounded REasoning SystemS), 2023 Just Tech Fellow Jay Cunningham interviewed Odest Chadwicke “Chad” Jenkins, professor of robotics and electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, about his research and thoughts on robotics and AI, the role ethics play in novel technologies, and educating and mentoring the new generation of technologists.
The DISCO Network (Digital Inquiry Speculation Collaboration Optimism Network) is an intergenerational collective of researchers, artists, technologists, policymakers, and practitioners working together to challenge digital social and racial inequalities. Participants include:
Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal is a collaborative work of the DISCO Network, a collective of researchers that includes 2024 Just Tech Fellow Catherine Knight Steele, that explores how skepticism of technology can reveal new possibilities. This excerpt from Chapter Four, “The Longing for Home,” prompts us to define and redefine “home” within digital communities and what that definition looks like as we collectively remember a not-too-distant digital past in the face of an increasingly algorithmically controlled digital future.
Accompanying the proliferation of generative AI have been parallel increases in AI optimist and doomer discourses. Here, Ruby Thelot critiques AI doomerism through an eschatological lens, arguing that the narratives AI doomers trumpet about the impending doom of superintelligent AI mirror those found in Judeo-Christian religious texts about the end of times.
Ruby Justice Thelot is a designer, artist, and cyberethnographer based in New York city. He is a professor of design and media studies at NYU. His work focuses on digital […]
Odest Chadwicke “Chad” Jenkins is a professor of robotics and a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan. He leads the Laboratory for Progress (Perceptive […]
Sarah Mosseri is a sociologist specializing in labor, inequality, and the hidden dynamics of workplace culture, with a PhD from the University of Virginia and a Courtesy Fellowship with Johns […]
The recent increase of airborne hazards—caused by, for example, wildfire smoke or industrial pollutants—has coincided with the proliferation of access to air quality monitoring data. However, having access to this data and, in particular, the air quality index (AQI), does not necessarily mean we understand the information given. Here, Just Tech Fellow Todd Whitney provides a guide to better understand air quality data and how to make it work for you.
Generative AI is becoming more ubiquitous across industries and services, including mental health and crisis counseling. Here, 2024 Data Fluencies Grantee Stephen Neville reflects on the proliferation of generative AI in counseling services, which has happened with little public debate or consideration for how it may impact people seeking help. He argues for greater transparency, accountability, and temperance from organizations that provided crisis support regarding their use of AI in counseling.
Michaela A. Ternasky-Holland is a Peabody-nominated and Emmy Award-winning director who specializes in creating impactful stories using immersive and interactive technology. She is one of the first directors to create […]
Jaylexia Clark is a Policy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Information Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Recently, she graduated from the […]