By: Emily Durning
Fall of 2024, I found myself entering my junior year of college with a part time job and full courseload, but still a much lighter workload than I was expecting. I felt as though I was not growing as much as I needed to; knowing that I was more than halfway through my college career was intimidating, and I wanted to find more that I could be doing outside of the classroom. I was a data science major, but I knew that CS heavy clubs were not for me, so I looked to my past political science professors to ask for advice. Through this, I was advised to get in touch with Michael Colaresi, a name I had not heard before, and I scheduled a meeting. In short, through this meeting with Dr. Colaresi, I was introduced to the inaugural Responsible Data Science Scholars Fellowship, run by Kendra Oliver and Eleanor Mattern. I had the privilege of being accepted into this program, had a wonderful experience, and am now getting a look behind the curtain and aiding in this year’s fellowship.
The RDS Scholars program runs from about halfway through the fall semester until Data Science Day in the spring. These students are accepted into the program regardless of year and major; the goal is to create a diverse group of students that will be able to learn from each other's perspectives. Throughout the first half of the fellowship, the meetings are discussion-based; students collaborate on what they believe constitutes ethical or responsible data science. They then analyze different kinds of frameworks that provide guidelines for responsible data science. All of these discussions work to prepare them for the second half of the fellowship, when they will be creating frameworks with an industry partner. The fellowship concludes with students presenting their frameworks during Data Science Day, an annual event “[showcasing] groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics at Pitt and with its partner organization.”
Last spring, I worked with two other scholars to create a principle-based framework to be used by professors when creating a GenAI usage clause for their classes. The framework could also be used by students, giving them prompting questions to analyze if they think that a certain usage of GenAI is responsible or not. At the end of the fellowship, we were left with a framework that was going to need to evolve in parallel with AI tools. The goal of the framework is not for it to be the deciding voice of what is right and what is wrong, but to prompt the user to consider their own views and decide for themselves what they think is a truly responsible or irresponsible use.
With this year’s cohort, I have had the opportunity to sit in on their discussions and see how they expand upon the same topics that my cohort was given and all that has changed within a year. To continue the work that my group started with our GenAI framework last spring, we had the idea to have each of this cohort’s members create their own framework to guide their AI usage. We wanted to explore what they deemed as responsible and irresponsible use, how they would choose to structure their framework, and what themes would emerge. The cohort completed this exercise at their last meeting of the fall semester, and in my next blog post, I’ll be sharing our findings!