The Department of Political Science is pleased to share that it was one of only nine programs, across the entire Ohio State University and Wexner Medical Center to be awarded a large, multi-year investment to help push a program already regularly ranked approximately 15th in the nation, with many subfields consistently in the Top 10, into the next tier. The Good-to-Great strategic investment program was sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs and creates partnerships across the department, as well as across colleges and disciplines.
The Department’s successful proposal, “Sociopolitical Analysis and Artificial Intelligence” has three distinct features: the creation of AI tools, their use, and policy implications that surround them. First, it involves the creation of novel approaches to the collection, aggregation, and evaluation of immense quantities of data. This runs the gamut from remote sensing, machine learning and extraction, the integration of distinct, large-scale data sources (from geo-location of individuals and devices, Internet of Things, spatial and social geographies of human interaction, social networks, etc.) and the computationally intensive tools needed to analyze them (e.g., natural language processing and machine learning techniques). The second is the emergent sociopolitical challenge that comes from the increasing employment of algorithmic and AI based technologies by governments around the world. These are already having profound implications in areas as diverse as social justice, international security, political polarization and extremism, state-society relations, and media and politics. Finally, the third addresses the increasingly pressing political question of what should be the boundaries on the utilization of AI tools? After all, AI environments can have serious unintended consequences, including the potential to magnify inequalities, sharply reduce individual privacy, produce and propagate misinformation, and intensify political division. In many respects, algorithms represent a new mode of governance—a technology that becomes part and parcel of processes of distribution, redistribution, regulation, protection, and interaction.
This five-year, $2 million dollar investment is matched with some college support, and will further help put OSU on the map as one of the premier institutions worldwide for cutting-edge research and training, now including in the applications and implications of AI-assisted data analysis for the study of politics and governance. The grant will support faculty hiring, post-doctoral researchers, graduate and undergraduate students all linked together around a shared theme: the scientific uses, regulatory challenges, and ethical implications of artificial intelligence technologies.
