The Artificial Intelligence Division in the Center for the Study of Social Justice at the University of Tennessee will function as a site for collaboration among colleagues with an interest in links between artificial intelligence and social justice, broadly understood. The division is dedicated to exploring the spectrum of uses of artificial intelligence as a technology, as fat as its social implications are concerned. For instance, division members are examining if and how AI is intended in part to enable and empower under-served populations in meeting their needs, goals, expectations, and aspirations and as it may subvert related efforts.
This site also will function as a repository for research being conducted in the context of the AI TENNessee Initiative, and research that is being conducted on the basis of seed grants funded by the Initiative.
Conceptual frameworks are combined with interdisciplinary approaches from critical theory, feminist and cross-cultural studies, postcolonial literature, and race and gender research, amongst others, to build teaching-research-service intersections to further social justice and social equity agendas for minority and under-served populations. Members in the Community Informatics Division use qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods including interviews, focus groups, statistical analysis, critical research, participatory action research, situated user-centered library service evaluation/assessment, grounded theory practice, service-learning, needs assessment and community technology analysis, content analysis, narratology/storytelling, and scenario-building, to name a few. Information-based outcomes in critical research applications have included proposed changes in intercultural communication and information system delivery, library service design, institutional policy and technology development, knowledge representation of marginalized domains of experience, curriculum and course planning on social justice topics via virtual and face-to-face delivery systems, development of culturally responsive information resources, print and electronic access to appropriate information resource collections, development and use of community-based social and digital technologies, amongst others.