3. Communities
Places, institutions, organizations, firms, market sectors,
disciplines, practices, identities, fields, groups, large and
small, formal and informal
Well-being
Health, education, happiness, wealth, opportunity,
capability, sustainability, resilience, purpose, both of the
community and of individuals exercising agency within it
3
4. The question:
How does generative AI
(development, use) help or
hurt community well-
being?
4
7. Will AI put people out of work?
Will AI change the nature of
employment (occupations)?
Will AI change the careers of workers?
Cf. Frey & Osborne, âThe Future of
Employmentâ (2013)
7
8. Ask about the community rather than
about the worker, or the firm, or the
occupation.
Ask the question about regional or local
employment patterns.
Consider: Pittsburgh.
8
14. If Pittsburgh is:
(i) old and getting older,
(ii) smaller and getting smaller, and
(iii) seeing a re-distribution of employment patterns away
from âeds and medsâ and toward âinformation,â
Then, as to employment, is development / use of generative AI:
(i) shifting the patterns in a more (productive) (equitable)
direction,
(ii) accelerating the patterns,
(iii) some of both (i) and (ii)
(iv) Neither
Is AI making Pittsburgh better or worse?
The analytic and policy challenge: the data does not exist at the
community level
14
15. Briefer case study #2:
Academic research on the
character, uses, and
meanings of AI
15
16. The problem:
The absence of an epistemic community that is
sufficiently and effectively broad and deep enough
to investigate
âą shallow questions (what sorts of generative AI
models should we build?),
âą intermediate questions (why/why not?), and
âą foundational questions (how are we changing the
nature of knowledge and the nature of human
agency and sociability, and the character(s) of our
environment(s)?)
One community, or several?
16
17. A solution?
Use the disruption introduced by ChatGPT to build new
community/ies â with respect to understanding AI, or with
respect to the nature of academic research generally, or both
â or observe the emergence of new epistemic communities
and communities of practice.
Example: University of Pittsburgh
âą Top-down coordination: âResponsible Adoption of
Generative AI in Higher Educationâ (accepted for ACM
FAccT 2024 a/o 5 Apr â24)
âą Bottom-up emergence: âPASTAâ
Will this work?
17
18. Briefest case studies:
AI systems and tools (âthe smart cityâ) with respect to:
1. Misinformation/disinformation
2. Civic infrastructure
3. Public transit
4. Education
5. Human and family services
6. Air quality
7. Public health and health outcomes
8. Neighborhood equity
9. Public administration
10. ⊠and more
18
19. So what?
âOurâ regulatory and policy toolbox is short on
strategies that aim at community-level, community-
specific interventions, that understand communities
as historically-rooted systems, and changeable, and
as parts of systems.
(âSelf-regulationâ âNormsâ)
(Reasons.)
Do we have time to wait for a better toolbox to be
built?
19