Penn State’s Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence aims to enhance interdisciplinary education, research, and outreach in artificial intelligence; its applications; and its impact on work, society, and all aspects of our daily lives. Launched in April 2020 and housed administratively in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, the Center aims to promote, practice and study socially responsible ways of building, deploying and using AI technology, with an emphasis on understanding the social and ethical implications of these activities. The Center also supports and encourages activities that enhance social good through the ethical use of AI and efforts that can mitigate threats from its misuse.

By engaging diverse groups of scholars from the earliest design stages through the deployment of new AI-based technologies, CSRAI embraces a holistic approach that encourages that all AI research and development activities to consider social and ethical implications as well as intended and possible unintended consequences. Only when we can bring together scholars from diverse areas—policy experts, engineers, ethicists, philosophers, and sociologists—can we understand how to best develop and deploy new AI-based technologies from day one.

Mission

The Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence at Penn State advances multi-disciplinary research in AI across and beyond Penn State; enables robust, socially responsible AI by involving all stakeholders including experts in science, technology, humanities, business, policy, and law; and trains students to acquire a broad multi-disciplinary knowledge of AI.

Vision

The Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence at Penn State will transform artificial intelligence research and education; improve society, government, and all aspects of human life through artificial intelligence; and serve as a clearinghouse for AI at Penn State and the national and international level.