AI in Social Research event to be held June 3-4

The AI and Social Research: Empathic AI, Metascience, and Methodology Conference will be held June 3-4 at the Eric J. Barron Innovation Hub and on Zoom.

The two-day event will bring together researchers from psychology, political science, philosophy, computer science, and related fields to explore the intersection of artificial intelligence and social research, according to Daryl Cameron, Sherwin Early Career Professor, senior research associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, associate professor of psychology, and director of the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making.

“I’m excited to bring together faculty, post-docs, and graduate students both from Penn State and around the world to talk about AI and its role in social research,” Cameron said. “We will talk about empathic AI, meta-science, and methodology, expanding upon the 2024 empathic AI event that we had here at Penn State — which led to several new collaborations and a forthcoming book volume on empathic AI.”

According to conference co-coordinator Bruce A. Desmarais, DeGrandis-McCourtney Early Career Professor in Political Science and director of the Center for Social Data Analytics, AI is revolutionizing both computational social science methods and research workflows, and AI tools and applications have themselves become a substantive frontier for computational social science research.

“I'm excited to explore the forefront of this work through the conference, which reflects a productive collaboration between the Center for Social Data Analytics and the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making,” Desmarais said. “We are grateful to the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence and the Social Science Research Institute for their support in making this event possible."

Cameron added that the event will bringing ethicists, engineers, and social scientists into conversation with each other to see what new insights can emerge. “We hope to use this event to spur a roadmap for further research in this fast-developing space. One unique feature of this event is that we want to bring social sciences, humanities, engineering, and information science and tech disciplines into direct conversation with one another, as the complexity of these problems requires the conversations between these vantage points.”

For more information, visit the conference website. To attend the event in-person, visit this registration page.