Mount St. Mary’s University will welcome Katherine L. Elkins, Ph.D., as the presenter for the 2023 Meredith Donovan Lecture. Elkins will address artificial intelligence (AI) in her lecture titled “The AI Epoch: Ethics and Insights at the Crossroads of Humanities and Sciences.” Elkins, professor of comparative literature and humanities at Kenyon College, in recent years, has concentrated her scholarship and teaching on AI and its integration into music, literature, foreign languages, world literature and modernism.
Set for November 8 at 4 p.m. in Laughlin Auditorium, the lecture is the second in a year of lectures and other events that deeply delve into AI’s impact on society and how Catholic liberal arts universities can help prepare for anticipated monumental changes. This lecture will also be livestreamed.
Elkins has been instrumental in developing the Integrated Program in Humane Studies concentration at Kenyon College which involves courses that weave together all four branches of the liberal arts: social science, natural science, art and humanities. She teaches classes like “Programming Humanity” that explores data collection, metadata and how to critically analyze data for biases and misrepresentation. “Cultural Analytics” tracks social media networks and explains how machine learning and human language patterns in posts produce social media feeds and recommended content.
Elkins’ most popular course, “AI for the Humanities,” ties the philosophical concepts of ethics and epistemology together with the unexplored “black box” that AI tends to be. A concept often taught in philosophy classes is the Chinese Room which situates you in a room with a sheet of Chinese characters that you can send through a door and get a translation. Does this mean you know Chinese? Did you learn anything? Does generating art through AI make you an artist? You had to make the prompts, didn’t you? Do you need to credit AI if you used it? AI can be a useful tool, but without critical analysis and skepticism, there is a potential abyss of ignorance.
The purpose of this lecture follows the ideals of its namesakes, Professor Emeritus of Biology William Meredith, Ph.D., and the late Emeritus Professor of Philosophy John Donovan, Ph.D., who always found intersections between their disciplines. Both were renowned for their friendship and their constant engagement with students.
This lecture series serves as the foundation of greater discussions in and outside of the classroom between faculty and students to expand their knowledge everywhere with everyone. This talk is funded by Raphael Della Ratta, C’92, whose sizeable donation works to continue the mission of these two professors. Others interested in continuing this mission may donate here by donating through the link here.