How we are shaping AI for people, not just progress
Nikki Dibben, Director of Research for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, emphasises that the development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) should be understood as a fundamentally human issue—not just a technical or mechanical one.
Artificial Intelligence is changing the way we live, work, and imagine the future. Yet, while AI’s foundations are often framed in terms of data, engineering, and computational power, its most profound questions are human ones. How should AI behave? Whose values should it reflect? Whose histories, cultures, and narratives will it amplify, or erase? These are questions that science alone cannot answer. They demand the insight, critical lens, and creative imagination of the Arts and Humanities.
At the University of Sheffield, Arts and Humanities is impacting specific areas of AI. The work of historians and philosophers makes clear that development of AI is not predetermined but the consequence of specific human choices. Identifying those choices, and framing them in specific ways, influences who gets to make those choices and how. Our humanist research uncovers the systems of power and values which underlie dominant ways of conceiving of AI as ‘purely’ technological. Doing so highlights the importance of ethics in framing and thinking through the choices that are made. This includes the creation, interrogation and use of the large amounts of data now available to us - not least in the arts and cultural heritage. Creating data sets responsibly, in ways which represent the richness and variety of human creative expression, are essential to creating trustworthy and ethical AI that researchers can use to drive forward research at the interface of AI, data science and the arts.
The Arts and Humanities remind us that innovation without critical reflection risks deepening inequality and eroding trust. And they provide methods of critical reflection and co-creation that can ground innovation in values that reflect our shared humanity.
This campaign celebrates the essential role that Arts and Humanities research has in guiding AI towards a future that is technologically advanced, but also socially responsible, culturally rich, and deeply human.
Nikki Dibben, Director of Research for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities