Stage view of the ISTAS 2024 Panel “Mitigating the Risk of GenAI.” Seated from left: Israel Cedillo, Francisco Rodriguez, and panel moderator Luis Kun. ISTAS 2024 continued on Thursday September 19 in Puebla, Mexico, with a second day of outstanding programming addressing the social implications of artificial intelligence, as well as sustainability and climate change, ethics and human values, and technology policy and law. Kathleen Kramer, IEEE President Elect was the morning keynote speaker. Paper tracks on social implications of technology and health and safety technology systems followed. The day also featured a second conference panel on Social Implications of AI moderated by SSIT President Luis Kun, this one titled “Mitigating the Risk of GenAI.”
Panel speakers included Kamal al Hadad, a former president of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES). It included IEEE Division VI representation from Alan Chong, IEEE Professional Communications Society (PCS) president, and from Arnold Pears, IEEE Education Society (ES) president-elect. Francisco Rodriguez, professor of Business, and Israel Cedillo, professor of Banking and IP/IT, both at Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), also spoke on the panel.
Chong emphasized that educators and technical professionals must maintain creative input into their work in the face of the impacts of GenAI. “How do you get your ideas in there?” he asked. “How are your ideas affected by GenAI?”
“We do a lot of work in the classroom,” he said, “educating students about the impacts of GenAI.” But as educators, he said, “We don’t feel threatened at the moment” by the technology. Rather the moment is seen as an opportunity to build people’s critical thinking and analytical skills, “to make GenAI a useful tool.”
Some slides from Arnold Pears’ presentation at the ISTAS 2024 Panel “Mitigating the Risk of GenAI.”
IEEE Education Society President-elect Arnold Pears also explored the challenges of teaching around GenAI, “the importance of data, and information, and knowledge, and wisdom.” He noted issues relating to information that is fed into AI, in terms of being correct or incorrect data, or information tainted by societal biases. Even more important, he said, are challenges around the tendency of GenAI to “make stuff up” when its probabilistic models don’t provide clear answers.
Two Invited talks closed out Day 2 of ISTAS 2024, one by Fernando Guarin on “Leveraging semiconductor technology,” and another from the ISTAS 2024 Technical Chair Ignacio Castillo, “A Review for Smart Cities.”
ISTAS 2024 continues and will end on Friday September 20, 2024, with more paper presentations, invited talks, and a third conference panel, this one to be hosted by Bozenna Pasik-Duncan titled “WEI: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”
Registration for attendees outside of Mexico to attend ISTAS 2024 virtually is still available at https://attend.ieee.org/istas-2024/454-2/.
JOIN SSIT