Artificial Intelligence and the
Future of Being Human
A Deerfield Forum / April 11, 2023
7:00 PM / Hess Auditorium
As part of our ongoing and collective work as an educational institution dedicated to student thriving and a commitment to free and open inquiry and expressive freedom, Head of School John Austin and the Deerfield Academy Academic Affairs Office are pleased to present the second annual Deerfield Forum: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Being Human. This year’s Forum, an all-Academy event, will take place on April 11 at 7:00 pm in the Hess Auditorium.
As an institution, Deerfield has long believed that diverse perspectives fuel creative and innovative thinking and build empathy and consideration. To continue to encourage schoolwide discussion and ensure diverse perspectives on issues of contemporary urgency, we are excited to continue the Deerfield Forum, which was first proposed by longtime Academy history teacher Joe Lyons to provide regular, sustained, and, in some instances, required opportunities for listening and conversation among the student body.
The Forum models scholarly and civic engagement; and, by staging conversations among scholars, professionals, and civic leaders, promotes constructive dialogue and active open-mindedness—a defining feature of Deerfield’s intellectual culture.
Students, Please Come Prepared!
Before April 11, please read, watch, or listen to at least one source below. Then draft a question to bring to the forum. You might get a chance to ask our speakers about it!
Have you just started thinking about AI and want to learn what all the buzz is about?
- Watch this story at CNBC: “Why OpenAI’s ChatGPT Is Such A Big Deal” CNBC, February 2, 2023
- Watch “Artificial Intelligence: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” February 27, 2023
- Listen to Stuart Russell’s Reith Lectures on AI
Interested in ethics and AI?
- Listen to “How ChatGPT Will Strain a Political System in Peril” from The New Yorker
- Read Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach “Now is the Moment for a Systemic Reset of AI and Technology Governance”
- Listen to “Is Ethical AI Possible: The Gray Area with Sean Illing”
- Listen to the Deerfield Academy Ethics Club podcast about AI.
Concerned about the spread of misinformation or disinformation in the era of AI?
- Check out Gary Marcus: “AI Platforms like ChatGPT Are Easy to Use but Also Potentially Dangerous”
- Listen to “The Human Cost of ChatGPT” podcast episode from The Take at Al Jazeera
- Check out Tiffany Hsu and Stuart Thompson: “Disinformation Researchers Raise Alarms About AI Chatbots”
AI is changing teaching and learning. Do you want to learn more about the future of education in the age of AI?
- Watch a panel discussion hosted by Bryan Alexander from December 15, 2022: “What might ChatGPT mean for higher education?”
- Check out Naomi S. Baron: “How ChatGPT Robs Students of Motivation to Write and Think for Themselves”
- Read Susan D’Agostino: “AI Bots Can Seem Sentient. Students Need Guardrails”
- Read Kevin Roose: “Don’t Ban ChatGPT in Schools. Teach With It”
- Read Stephen Marche: “The College Essay is Dead”
Have you considered what happens when humans get attached to chatbots?
- Check out Kevin Roose: “A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled”
- Check out Gary Marcus: “Don’t go breaking my heart”
Interested in AI’s potential as assistive technology for the disability community?
- Check out Bronwyn Hemsley, Emma Power, and Fiona Given: “Will AI tech like ChatGPT improve inclusion for people with communication disability?”
- Check out Maggie Melo: “ChatGPT as an Assistive Technology”
2023 Moderator and Panelists
Steven Johnson
Called a “deep thinker and a gifted storyteller” by the New York Times, Steven Johnson is the author of 13 books on the history of science, technology, and innovation, including The Ghost Map, Where Good Ideas Come From, and most recently, Extra Life: A Short History Of Living Longer. He is also the host and co-creator of the Emmy-winning PBS/BBC series How We Got To Now and Extra Life. He is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, and the host of the podcast The TED Interview. Johnson was chosen by Prospect magazine as one of the Top Ten Brains of the Digital Future, and The Wall Street Journal called him “one of the most persuasive advocates for the role of collaboration in innovation.” Johnson is currently serving a one-year term as a Visiting Scholar at Google Labs. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, and Marin County, CA, with his wife and three sons. Read Johnson’s “AI Is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What It Says.”
Melanie Mitchell, PhD
Melanie Mitchell is a researcher, educator, and award-winning author with unique expertise in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and complex systems. Mitchell is renowned for her teaching and writing on science and technology; her essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Science Magazine, New Scientist, and Technological Review, among other venues. Mitchell’s 2019 book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, is an in-depth and highly readable study of modern-day artificial intelligence, giving the reader a clear sense of what the field has actually accomplished and how much further it has to go. Mitchell’s online course “Introduction to Complexity” has been taken by over 25,000 students, and is one of Course Central’s “top fifty online courses of all time.” In the research community, Mitchell is well-known for her work on analogy-making, and for the development of the Copycat computer model of analogy in particular (co-authored with Douglas Hofstadter); more recently she has been extending this work to create AI systems that make sophisticated visual analogies. Listen to Mitchell on Bridging the Gaps: A Portal for Curious Minds Podcast.