Just AI: A Speaker Series on Socially Responsible Technology
Your friend's daughter has an AI boyfriend. AI responded to your patient portal messages. AI will be used to monitor non-citizens' social media. Duolingo's CEO says AI is a better teacher than humans. Your boss says you need to justify why your role can't be done by AI. At the airport, AI appears in the form of facial recognition at security. AI sorts your job application.
Artificial intelligence is suddenly everywhere. And it's affecting all of us.
From high school teachers to their students, from doctors to their patients, from bosses to their employees, we all find ourselves grappling with societal shifts and questions brought about about this technology. It's being rolled out in government, education, medicine and workplaces.
Often, these applications come with the message that AI will make our lives easier, more efficient, and even more creative. But what might be lost along with those improvements? What values should be guiding how and when we use these tools? What don't we see behind the scenes of technological innovation? And what can we learn about AI that will better prepare us to navigate its integration into everyday life?
Join us to explore deep questions about the present and future of AI. The Just AI speaker series features three experts who explore AI from different angles, including the social, political, technical and environmental. This series will help us better understand this technology, reveal hidden aspects you may never have considered, and, perhaps above all, invite a sense of empowerment in our own lives and communities about how to respond to this unprecedented moment at the intersection of humans and technology.
Meet the Speakers
Meredith Broussard | January 28
Meredith Broussard is the author of More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech as well as the award-winning 2018 book Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. An associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and the research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology, Broussard's research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting, with particular interest in AI ethics and using data analysis for social good.
Ray Theater | 5:30 p.m. | Reserve Your Ticket
Karen Hao | March 2
Karen Hao brings together her training as an engineer with a talent for telling the stories behind the technology. Selected by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in AI in 2025, she is a best-selling author and award-winner journalist. Her most recent book is Empire of AI, which looks at the creation of Open AI, the corporation behind ChatGPT. It's an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, one that is reshaping the planet in real time.
Toomey Lobby | 5:30 p.m. | Reserve Your Ticket
Brian Merchant | May 1
Brian Merchant asks the questions that need to be asked about the human impacts of technology. The author of a bestselling book about the iPhone, The One Device, Merchant's most recent book is Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. Currently serving as journalist-in-residence at the AI Now Institute, Merchant has been The Los Angeles Times’ tech columnist, an editor at Motherboard, VICE's science and technology publication, and the founder of Terraform, its online fiction site. He also established Automaton, a project that examined the human impact of AI and automation, for Gizmodo. Merchant's work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, Wired, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Slate, The Washington Post, Fast Company, Fortune, and others.
Ray Theater | 5:30 p.m. | Reserve Your Ticket
The Event Format
We created this series to spark questions and conversation about the topic of AI in our community. The Just AI series events will all be free and open to the public. Each event will include:
- Presentation and on-stage conversation with the featured speaker (submit a question here to help shape the conversation)
- An AI-themed book sale by Grass Roots Books
- An author book signing
- Conversation cards at each table to encourage community dialogue following the speaker's talk
Series Organizers: OSU humanities professors Megan Ward and Alicia Patterson worked together to bring this series to Corvallis. Megan is an associate professor of English and the director of OSU's Center for the Humanities. Among her research interests are histories of technology and how humanities fields can help the public engage with complex topics shaping society. Alicia is an assistant professor of philosophy who specializes in ethics, especially in relation to technology, and who has held a position in PRAx throughout the year to shape visual arts exhibitions and talks on the theme of AI.