Join Matthew L. Jones, Smith Family Professor of History at Princeton University, for his talk, “Beyond Rejection, Beyond Adulation: AI and Qualitative Research, Critique and Pedagogy,” on the potential uses and threats to humanistic research and teaching posed by Large Language Models (LLMs).

Talk: 4-5 pm
Audience Q&A: 5-5:30 pm
Reception: 5:30-6:30 pm

After early attempts at Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT and its imitators exploded in the public imagination by producing simulations of humanistic culture: narratives, poems, and visual images. We expect computers to be good with numbers. But sonnets or legal briefs? Not so much. While these technologies clearly threaten to replace scientific and technical labor, they seem to loom large over more qualitative forms of inquiry—the traditional liberal arts and law—even more. 

This talk will consider:

• What does the critical use of these problematic technologies — full of bias, hallucinations and environmental externalities — look like?
• Can we avoid uncritical and dangerous adoption and total rejection of these technologies alike?
• How can we integrate critical awareness into our practices without giving up the very academic values central to inquiry?

This event is co-hosted by the CCAS Department of American Studies, CCAS Department of History and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research.