AI's impact on society, media & democracy

Read more about the focus of the Research Semester Programme "AI's impact on Society, Media & Democracy".

How is AI impacting the media and our democratic processes? What can be expected in the near future, and what measures need to be taken to ensure society at large benefits from these rapid developments? The emergence of powerful AI (such as Large Language Models) is rapidly pervading our digital society and has the potential to profoundly transform people’s public and private lives. There is therefore an urgent need to explore how we can ensure that these developments are both enriching, beneficial and fair for society as a whole.

These topics will be discussed in the Research Semester Programme on AI’s Impact on Society, Media, and Democracy at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI). This is a joint effort by the Intelligent and Autonomous Systems group, the Human-Centered Data Analytics group, and the Distributed & Interactive Systems group. This programme is supported by the larger AI, Media, and Democracy (AIMD) lab initiative.

Events

Workshop (23-24 April 2024)

On 23 and 24 April there will be a workshop titled 'Large Language Models for media and democracy: wrecking or saving society?'. This workshop addresses technical and societal issues that emerged around foundational models and discusses recent developments to address them, with a particular emphasis on the Dutch ecosystem.

Registration for the workshop is closed on 23-24 April

Main seminar (27-28 May 2024)

This main 2-day event will feature a number of renowned speakers that will highlight how AI is already impacting on the media and democratic processes, what can be expected in the near future, and what measures need to be taken to make sure society at large benefits from these rapid developments.

Visit the main event page on the website 'AI, Media and Democracy Lab' for more information about the event and the programme.

Register here for the main seminar on 27-28 May