Mount St. Mary’s University Professor Jack Trammell, Ph.D., chair of the Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Human Services Department, recently received summer 2024 research funding from the university to study the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on human behavior, with a focus on its effect on people with disabilities.
“New technologies have always resulted in devices and interventions that make the world more accessible to people with disabilities,” Trammell said. “However, AI is a different kind of emerging technology. Although some of its benefits are obvious right away, the fundamental questions it raises about what it means to be fully human are largely unanswered at this time.”
Trammell’s work took him to various sites, including archives in New York City, Washington D.C., and other mid-Atlantic cities, and conferences from Atlanta, Georgia to Europe. The highlight was delivering a well-received paper on his work to an international audience at the historic University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, titled, “Disability Access and Advocacy in a Post-AI Environment: The Increasing Need to Merge Analog Accommodation with Virtual Equity.”
The Mount professor’s research included interviewing more than a dozen people from various walks of life and professions about their impressions of AI and its impact on their day-to-day lives. In seeking out the impact of AI, he 
found its influence present in many everyday items and activities, from comic books and paranormal investigators to the way subway doors operate.
“People with disabilities have always lived in a world with ablest patterns and challenges to accessibility,” Trammell said. “But they also have been some of the strongest advocates for innovative technology. Our experience with COVID-19 showed that many jobs can be done virtually, and that opened more employment opportunities for some people with disabilities.”
Trammell’s work is part of an ongoing book project to be completed later this year titled, “The Unelegant A.I. Universe: Working and Playing in the New Epoch.” He has also collaborated with faculty in other departments at the Mount, such as theology and philosophy, to foster ongoing interdisciplinary dialogues about the changes occurring because of AI.
In addition, Trammell has worked with outside researchers, being assured by some experts, such as physicist Stephen Granade, that AI is not designed to and can’t at this time perfectly mimic how neurons work. However, there can be little doubt that AI is not like many other past forms of emergent technology.
“AI is a new game,” Trammell said. “At one point I was studying patent application patterns to see if we really are living in a more innovative time. But I quickly learned that generative machine learning [not simple machine learning] is a brand-new world of possibilities—and dangers. It would be a huge mistake to believe that AI will end our quest to achieve a more accessible world for people with disabilities.”
Trammell’s research will continue during the 2024-2025 academic year, with the aid of his students, some of whom are also studying the effects of AI. His areas of study include the way AI will transform aspects of classic sociological theory.
The Mount provides competitive summer research opportunities to faculty as part of the university’s commitment to staying in the forefront of new fields and innovation.