Brown CS News

The image spans the entire movie screen: a robotic foot crushing a human skull atop a mountain of bones. Thirty years later, and only three years into the ChatGPT era, Terminator 2’s vision of AI’s future looks as dated as its 1990’s haircuts, but what do we expect in its place? Will artificial intelligence cure disease or hasten environmental disaster, free us from drudgery or drown us in slop? What’s next for AI, and what role does Brown have to play?

“Every morning, I have nine tabs open on my phone before breakfast just to try and stay current on AI,” says Niamh McGuigan, recently Director of the Brown University Library’s Center for Library Exploration and Research. “How do we keep up? We know other people are making decisions about AI that impact us, and we want to know what they’re doing. And we’re making decisions that we know impact others, and we don’t want to make them alone.”

Eric Kaldor is Director of Assessment and Transformational Programs at Brown’s Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning. 

“There are terrifying images out there that give us pause,” he says, “and make us ask if AI is different from other major advances of the past. There are reasons for concern and reasons for optimism, but most importantly, do we wind up with a technology that empowers only a few, or do we create one that’s broadly empowering to lots of people?”

“I was looking at a recent list of jobs that someone predicted won’t be made obsolete by AI,” says Ellie Pavlick, Briger Family Distinguished Associate Professor of Computer Science and co-founder of Brown’s AI Research Institute on Interaction for AI Assistants (ARIA), “and I saw ‘Prompt Engineer’ there. Can you picture yourself telling your kid to go into a career in prompt engineering? There’s a complete lack of imagination in thinking that all we can do is adapt to an increasingly awful reality. That’s not the way this has to go! Let’s rewrite the script, starting here at Brown.”

“It’s a truly challenging time,” says Brenda Rubenstein, Vernon K. Krieble Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Physics, and Director of Brown’s Data Science Institute (DSI), “but at Brown we can bring our collective intellect to bear and use deep thought, deep values, and deep collaboration to shape the course of AI and sail the ship in the right direction to benefit humanity.”

Some of the work already being done on campus will change the world, but first it’s going to change Brown. With nuance, in depth, with a bit of humor and without a lot of hype, Michael Littman, University Professor of Computer Science and our first Associate Provost for Artificial Intelligence (APAI), would like to tell you all about it.

To read the rest of this story and explore the latest issue of Conduit, the annual Brown CS magazine, click here.