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02 November 2023 | Story NITHA RAMNATH | Photo SUPPLIED
Is AI the future of research? Experiences of co-authoring a book with machine-generated summaries

The University of the Free State (UFS) is pleased to invite you to an online public lecture that will be presented by Prof Hussein Solomon, Senior Professor of Gender and Africa Studies at the UFS. Prof Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem, Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria (UP), will respond. 

Lecture description: Is AI the future of research? Experiences of co-authoring a book with machine-generated summaries.

The world is undergoing tectonic technological shifts that hold grave challenges to societies, universities, and researchers. For any researcher, the persistent challenge is to negotiate a plethora of different sources on the subject, which could be overwhelming. AI could be one means to facilitate the process of research. This, however, raises ethical questions as to the originality of research, issues of plagiarism, and the question of the individual researcher’s own intuition as opposed to software-generated prompts. Prof Solomon shares his experiences working on a machine-generated book.

Date:  Monday, 27 November 2023
Time: 14:00-15:30 

 

WATCH: www.ufs.ac.za/Webinar

For further information, contact Alicia Pienaar at pienaaran1@ufs.ac.za.

Speaker:

Prof Solomon is a Professor in the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at the UFS. His research interests revolve around political Islam and issues of terrorism. His most recent books include African Security in the Anthropocene (with Jude Cocodia, Springer, 2023), The Future of War in Africa (with Eeben Barlow, Amazon Kindle, 2023), Intersectionality and LGBTQI Rights: A Comparative Analysis of Iran, Turkey and Egypt (with Simone Bekker, Nova Publishers, 2023), Directions in International Terrorism: Theories, Trends and Trajectories (Palgrave, 2021), Terrorism in Africa: New Trends and Frontiers (with Glen Segell and Sergey Kostelyanets, Institute for African Studies, Moscow, 2021), and Arab MENA Countries: Vulnerabilities and Constraints Against Democracy on the Eve of the Global COVID-19 Crisis (with Arno Tausch, Springer 2021).

Respondent:

Prof Ruttkamp-Bloem is Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at UP, the AI ethics lead at the Centre for AI Research (CAIR), and the chair of the Southern African Conference on AI Research (SACAIR). She is a philosopher of science and technology, an AI ethics policy adviser, a machine ethics researcher, and is an associate editor of the Science and Engineering Ethics journal. Prof Ruttkamp-Bloem led the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group that prepared the draft of the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI, currently assists with implementing the recommendation, and is the current rapporteur for the UNESCO Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST). Prof Ruttkamp-Bloem has recently been appointed to the AI Advisory Body reporting to the Secretary General of the UN.

News Archive

Students speak at Faculty of Law as part of Blackstone Legal Fellowship Programm
2012-08-01

 
At the event were, from the left: Elizabeth Oklevitch, Ewelina Ochab, Prof. Shaun de Freitas and Prof. Andries Raath, also from the Department of Constitutional Law and Philosophy of Law.
Photo: Leonie Bolleurs
1 August 2012

Two students from abroad, Elizabeth Oklevitch, studying at the Regent University School of Law, Virginia Beach in the US, and Ewelina Ochab, a postgraduate student with a Diploma in Law who received her LLB from the University of Kent at Canterbury, have each delivered a 15-minute presentation at the Faculty of Law. These presentations are part of the six-week practical leg of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship Programme, held annually in Phoenix, Arizona.

This is the fourth consecutive year that the Faculty of Law has been involved in this initiative.

Oklevitch spoke on the impact of the natural law grounding of Sir William Blackstone’s system of rights and Ochab about the margin of appreciation in the case A, B and C v Ireland.

According to Prof. Shaun de Freitas from the Department of Constitutional Law and Philosophy of Law, the programme is aimed at teaching law students the importance of religious freedoms and rights. The programme is run by Alliance Defending Freedoms (ADF) in the US.

“The programme (in its 14th year) accommodates more than 130 students at the moment, representing schools of law in the United States (which include the universities of Duke, Harvard, Notre Dame, New York and Yale) and Europe. To date, approximately 1 100 students have completed the programme,” said Prof. De Freitas.
 

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