TRAILS · TRAIN RESPONSIBLE AI LEARNING SOCIETY

The project proposal under the title TRAILS (acronym) aims to help prepare the society for large progress that has been made in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), emerging AI tools that are already transforming our day-to-day work, and the impact that this research will have on our society as a whole. Although AI and machine learning have been used in wide areas of science research for decades, the public has only recently become aware first-hand of their potential through open text-to-image models like DALL-E and Midjourney and large language models like Chat-GPT. Until last 2-3 years, the general public has mostly encountered the term AI in SciFi movies and literature, but the details of what it actually means were rarely covered in the general education. Thus, for the general public, AI research is one of the upcoming but great unknowns, often accompanied with a deep misunderstanding of how it really works, resulting sometimes in fears about “machines taking over our jobs”, but also in warranted concerns about how AI tools will impact education. As a part of 2-year TRAIL project (Year 1: Train, Year 2: Trail/Validate), we aim to take the general public on a deep learning trip around topics related to AI. The program of the Year 1 (TRAIN year) will be focused around “training” and familiarizing the general public with the background of machine learning and AI – historical perspective, the science behind it, what it entails with special attention given to big data side of it in terms of training models, while the Year 2 (TRAIL or Validate year) will focus more on emerging tools, applications and integration of AI in our every-day lives.