STEM Café—Ethics, Creativity and the Impacts of Artificial Intelligence

Oct. 4, 6:30-8:30 p.m. 

Join us from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at Fatty's Pub and Grille in DeKalb, Illinois, for the next STEM Café—Ethics, Creativity and the Impacts of Artificial Intelligence.

ChatGPT, DALL-E and other generative AI technologies are changing the face of human creativity and impacting professions in marketing, art and literature. However, polarizing arguments about these new technologies’ ability to either save or doom humanity are at least as old as Plato — who recorded a debate about that new, fantastic and disruptive technology that was called writing more than 2,000 years ago.

Join two experts in new and emerging technologies to learn more about the practical and ethical implications of artificial intelligence on creativity and communication. They’ll help us understand how a computer with no brain can “see,” “learn” and “create” art; how this technology reproduces human biases; and some of the short- and long-term effects of generative AI on human audiences. They’ll also provide historical context to help us better understand recent technology as yet another iteration in a long line of technical innovations that have contributed to and helped us better understand what we mean by “creative.”
 

About the speakers:

David J. Gunkel, Ph.D., NIU professor of media studies and Presidential Research, Scholarship and Artistry Professor.

Andy Jeon, Ph.D., NIU assistant professor of marketing.
 

Northern Illinois University STEM Cafés are part of NIU STEAM and are designed to increase public awareness of the critical role that STEM fields play in our everyday lives. They are offered in partnership with the NIU Alumni Association and made possible with support from Thermo Fisher Scientific and Bayer Fund.