The current edition of the project, focusing on the relations between humans and animals and carried out under the slogan Human(e) to Animals, is just coming to a close, finishing on the last Friday of September, on the European Researchers’ Night. You are cordially invited to visit the diverse events! Our project brings together virtually every scientific discipline as it is seen as a forum where different sciences can meet to discuss the topical issues of our time.
In a new project application to the call for proposals entitled European Researchers’ Night and Researchers at Schools 2024-2025, which closes on 25 October this year, we would like to address a particularly topical theme that is sure to continue to occupy our sciences and communities at large for a long time, i.e. artificial intelligence. We would thus like to title the new edition of our Night with the slogan Human, AI.
Artificial intelligence is a new key factor in our world, joining traditional factors comprising nature, humans and authority. The lives of all of us, or even everything, depend on how we place this new factor among existing ones.
Until recently, the development of AI was the subject of high hopes and was followed with great enthusiasm, but recently such hopes and enthusiasm have been replaced by worry and even fear. Right now, AI developments seem hard to follow, even almost unmanageable. I believe that scientists in all fields have a duty to respond to such developments and attempt to explain them to the widest possible range of audiences, particularly to young people, who can be the most vulnerable in this context and are definitely the most sensitive.
Within the objectives of the call for proposals, our Human, AI project would tackle the following problem clusters:
1. What exactly is AI? How does it work?
2. What opportunities does AI provide to sciences and their development? What are the greatest challenges and greatest threats in this context? Can AI replace the work of a scientist? If so, in which fields and to what extent?
3. What are the desirable as well as undesirable roles of AI in our daily lives? In which fields can it better human lives and the world at large and in which fields does it pose a risk of losing control of our lives and the world?
4. How should AI-related risks be managed? What can citizens do in this context? What must be done by sciences and what by political decision-makers?
5. How should AI be included in our schools, how should the best opportunities it provides be seized and how should young people be warned of the threats related to its use and abuse?
I invite you to reflect on these topics and form your response to them in the form of an event or series of events. In doing so, please consider young people, including the youngest and smallest.
The application deadline is 8 September 2023. Please, contact us at noc.raziskovalcev@ff.uni-lj.si.
In the hope of our collaboration, which I am looking forward to, I am sending my best regards and wish you a very pleasant summer and all the best,
Sašo Jerše
Vice-Dean of Doctoral Studies and Research at FF UL and project leader for the European Researchers’ Night – Humanities Rock!
