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PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] Its roots date back to ancient Greek philosophers. The advent of computers in the mid-20th century made the concept a bit more concrete. And now its here to stay.

That was the overarching message about artificial intelligence during a Thursday, Nov. 3, panel discussion in which three AI scholars at Brown University shared their expertise.

AI seems like it has popped up out of nowhere, but it's actually been under the surface for a long time, said Assistant Professor of Computer Science Stephen Bach. And now that it's popped up keep an eye out.

The discussion, titled Lets Chat About ChatGPT, welcomed a packed audience in Browns Stephen Robert 62 Campus Center. It helped to ground some of the myths, truths and inner workings of AI tools that have been lost among often sensational headlines including the deep history of AI, how such systems are built, what they promise and what they actually deliver.

Artificial intelligence is very much a very old ambition, said panelist Ellie Pavlick, an assistant professor of computer science and linguistics at Brown. You can argue [it goes] as far back as Plato and Socrates, but definitely at least to the 50s, [which] was the heyday of We now have computers. Is it going to be possible to replicate human-level intelligence in a non-human thing?

The panel was part of an Office of the Provost initiative titled Conversations on AI and our data-driven society, hosted in partnership with Browns Data Science Institute. It was the first event in the new series, which will offer monthly discussions about the opportunities and impact that AI technology presents to higher education and the world well beyond.

We are just beginning to understand the ways that AI will impact the way we teach and learn at Brown and, more broadly, society, said University Provost Francis J. Doyle III, who moderated the event. Charting a path for the future of AI at Brown requires a strategic approach that cuts across all fields of scholarship. These campus-wide discussions about the impact of AI on our teaching and research practices are vitally important, as we try to build an understanding of the promises and limitations of AI.

Thursdays discussion came at a timely moment. It was just under a year ago that ChatGPT made its debut, igniting worldwide conversations about AI-powered chatbots and technologies that are now not only playing out around kitchen tables, but in the halls of Washington. Early this week, U.S. President Joe Biden issued a wide-ranging executive order aimed at safeguarding against threats posed by artificial intelligence, including generative AI which can often take the form of deep fakes, or artificially generated false images and videos.

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Old concept, new implications: Brown scholars interrogate how AI is changing the world - Brown University