In this presentation, Dr. Christopher L. Dancy and Deja Workman critically discuss connections between AI systems, digital archives, and Blackness and discuss some of the infrastructure creation that has given us the space to explore these connections. They will use a multi-level perspective to consider ways in which a standard genre of the human ground AI engineering processes and consider what these deployed AI systems mean for (Black) digital archives. This same critical perspective is used to also consider memory and the interactions between current generative AI systems, knowledge, and archives while thinking through paths towards liberatory futures that are anchored in a Black radical tradition.
Dr. Christopher L. Dancy is an associate professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, and African American Studies at Penn State, and also an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society. He is founder and director of The Human in Computing and Cognition (THiCC) lab, and is a co-Director of the Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk which now houses the Liberatory Tech project that he founded and directs.
His expertise and interests lie at the intersection of human behavior, computational systems, and Blackness with a goal of studying the Human in various computing systems and engineering processes. He uses theory, perspectives, and methods from Black studies, computational cognitive science, and artificial intelligence, to ground his multidisciplinary research and teaching at these intersections.
Dr. Dancy is the author of several articles on these topics including AI and Blackness: Towards moving beyond bias and representation. He is an NSF CAREER award recipient, with a goal of moving AI and computing towards the development of socioculturally competent AI systems, and is co-lead of the Computational Representation of Human Decision Processes research thrust for the NSF AI Institute for Societal Decision-Making (AI-SDM) where he is using computational cognitive systems to study and intervene in the real impacts of racialization and anti-Blackness on decision making processes and outcomes. Dr. Dancy has consistently centered Blackness in programs he’s organized and facilitated as co-facilitator of the Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives & Cultures (Bucknell University, 2022) and as creator and organizer of the 2023 Penn State Liberatory Tech Scholars program, co-creator and co-organizer of the 2023 critical tech workshop Spilling the Tea Stilling an Ocean, and co-creator and co-organizer of the THiCC x Logic(s) Liberatory Tech Fellows Program (2024).
Deja Workman is a 4th year PhD student in Informatics at Penn State in the College of Information Sciences and Technology. They are a member of The Human in Computing and Cognition Lab, where she researches the artificial intelligence development process and how it others the Black community, carceral algorithms and understanding how they distort Black narratives in the criminal punishment system, and Black digital archive accessibility. In particular, she is currently focusing on how to make Black digital archives accessible for humans and simultaneously inaccessible for generative machines.
The Just Tech: Speaker Series is presented in conjunction with the Aydelotte Foundation Faculty and Staff Seminar, Just Tech: Accessible, Sustainable Futures.
Please note that space is limited and advance registration is required. Priority will be given to members of the Just Tech: Faculty and Staff Research Seminar. All registrants will be notified of their registration status by Thursday, October 30.
