Ask a large language model (LLM) – a generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology like ChatGPT – what a Muslim man looks like, and it may churn out photos of terrorists. Punch in a request for photos of New Delhi, India’s capital city with rich cultural diversity, and you might get slides of fiery slums. “People with disabilities” might yield images of people with glitchy, dysmorphic faces in wheelchairs – a tell-tale sign that AI is producing images without enough data to draw from.

To leading AI scholars and researchers at the “Thought Summit: LLMs and Society,” held May 19-21 in the ILR Conference Center, such errors aren’t harmless; they reveal a fundamental design problem and systemic issues, said Aditya Vashistha, assistant professor of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and the summit’s lead faculty organizer. AI tools are being designed by and for Western culture, which represents just 15% of the world’s population, but used around the globe, he said. 

“One reason why this is problematic is because a large proportion of the world's population live in non-Western settings where their values, lived experiences, and needs are systematically deprioritized in current AI advances,” Vashistha told the crowd of roughly 40 scholars, many from Cornell. “This is even more concerning given the large infusion of AI technologies into high-stakes settings, in education, healthcare, and law, among others.” 

Álvaro Soto, director of the Chilean National Center for AI (CENAI), was one of some 40 leading AI scholars and researchers at “Thought Summit: LLMs and Society” held May 19-21 at Cornell University’s Ithaca campus. Photo by Jake Cornelius

Hosted by Cornell’s Global AI Initiative as part of the Thought Summit program organized by the Cornell Center for Data Science for Enterprise & Society, Thought Summit: LLMs and Society is the second of several summits slated this fiscal year at Cornell. The opening event brought together interdisciplinary AI scholars, researchers, and policymakers from industry, academia, and think tanks to consider how best to integrate LLMs into high-consequence areas. OpenAI, Meta, Google Research, Microsoft Research, and Infosys were some of the companies represented at the summit, which was also sponsored by the Cornell Center for Social Sciences. Data & Society, the Center for Democracy & Technology, and the Chilean National Center for AI (CENAI) were among the policy and AI think tanks in attendance. 

Read the full story on the Cornell Bowers website.