NEWS On February 28, TAIGA organized the Fireside talk in Galaxen, with the aim of promoting conversations about AI from a transdisciplinary perspective. The event attracted researchers and students from different disciplines at Umeå University, including the #frAIday talk speaker Samuel Merrill who stayed for the discussion. Topics of conversation touched on prerequisites for working transdisciplinarily with AI, experiences of applying for seed money and examples of successful research projects.
Participants from departments of Computer Science, Law, UmArts, Sociology, and Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies discussing topics within AI. Photo: Anna Lindström
The background to the event is TAIGA's ambition to promote AI research that takes into account ethical, legal, technical, cultural and social aspects. TAIGA, which was formed in the fall of 2022 and is part of Umeå University's investment in the field of AI, brings together researchers with an interest in AI's applications and its impact on society.
TAIGA is often asked to organize events where researchers can meet across their fields of knowledge to discuss AI. This fall's survey, sent out to the TAIGA Associates network, also revealed a strong desire for more such meetings. Now that the TAIGA center has grown with three out of four postdocs in place, there was the opportunity to organize Fireside Talk: Open Conversations.
The event took place in Galaxen, just after TAIGA's weekly #frAIday talk activity, this week titled “Stochastic remembering and distributed mnemonic agency”. The invitation made it clear that the questions during the Fireside talk could, but did not have to be related to the previous frAIday talk of the day.
Fireside talk is a team work by TAIGA postdocs, Michel Rouleau-Dick, Niclas Hell and Burcin Genis-Ergün. During the event, post doc Michel, with one foot in the focus area Art and AI and the other in CELS, was present to moderate the conversation if necessary.
The discussions flowed and touched on everything from the prerequisites for working transdisciplinary with AI, agency in decision-making, experiences of applying for seed money and examples of successful research projects. An example of the latter is the cooperation between Samuel Merrill, Rik Smit och Thomas Smits from that days previous #frAIday talk. In 2023, they were awarded funding from the TAIGA micro-project. In 2024, they finished writing the article on remembering with ChatGPT, which was published on BRILL in November 2024.
Participants gave positive feedback and mentioned that this type of meeting fulfills the need they often miss, to connect with researchers in other disciplines who are also immersed in fields of AI. TAIGA's intention is to organize Fireside talks once a month to continue promoting collaborations in transdisciplinary AI. The next event will take place on March 28, 2025 in Galaxen.
If you want to read more about the seed money TAIGA has open application for until April 11th, please read more below.