PEARC21 Plenary Session: AI for Innovative Social Work
By Ken Chiacchia, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center/XSEDE
July 21, 2021
AI analysis of social media poses a double-edged sword for social work and addressing the needs of at-risk youths, said Desmond Upton Patton, senior associate dean, Innovation and Academic Affairs, Columbia University. Speaking in the opening plenary session of the PEARC21 conference, Patton noted that on the one hand, it offers a powerful potential tool for understanding and preventing violence. On the other hand, when applied thoughtlessly or without social context, it runs a high risk of false inference, over-surveillance and further victimizing the communities it intends to help.