The annual symposium brings together university faculty, researchers, staff, students, practitioners, artists, and community members interested in applied interdisciplinary research on climate resilience, adaptation, and environmental justice.

How are our perceptions of AI technologies influenced by popular media? Join us for a dynamic and thought-provoking discussion on the blurred, hard lines, and connections between AI hype, portrayals of AI in entertainment media, and reality.

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT took the AI world by storm a year ago. Dhamani and Engler, co-authors of Introduction to Generative AI, will discuss how generative AI models work at a high level, with an emphasis on large language models (LLMs). This engaging discussion will not only explore the immense potential of LLMs but also shed light on their inherent limitations, fostering a nuanced understanding of their capabilities. They will discuss the broader societal, legal, and ethical issues that surround them, such as copyright and intellectual property, bias, and misuse. Further, Dhamani and Engler will share their real-world experience and outline paths forward, including recommendations for using generative tools responsibly and research approaches towards the development of safer generative AI. This discussion will be accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences, ensuring that everyone can grasp the transformative capabilities and limitations of these models so that we can collectively work towards a society that is informed and considerate about generative AI.

The leaps in AI taking place today are causing similar and even more extraordinary challenges. What can be learned from the ways in which industries adapted to UGC that we can apply to AI? How can we be better prepared for the dark side of AI when large-scale weaponization of the technology inevitably occurs? What safeguards can we start to build that might mitigate the eventual harms?

The Good Systems Speaker Series brings together diverse perspectives on ethical AI from across the academic, industry, nonprofit, and public service sectors.

Today, urban dwellers tend to think about where their water comes from only when it stops flowing, or when it flows too much. This water usually makes it to residential consumers through an extensive and technologically sophisticated infrastructure that remains largely invisible outside times of crisis. Across much of human history (and in many parts of the world today), by contrast, the question of where to get water for daily needs was much more immediate.

The Texas Gulf Coast faces several pressing water-related issues. Water contamination from industry, floods, and saltwater; a stressed water supply from urbanization; and the looming peril of sea level rise represent only a few of the interlocking challenges that coastal communities face. This panel of scientists, advocates, and planners will illuminate how these challenges are being met.

he evening’s dialogue will focus on mutual research interests connecting Dean’s artistic practice and Shorey’s work in communications and social sciences—interests including corporate labor practices, workers’ rights, and how media and advertising shape our perceptions of complex realities.

Organized by Good Systems, this panel at the McCombs Center for Analytics and Transformative Technologies 2023 Global Analytics Summit explores how generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT and DALL-E are shaping the way we work.

The complex way in which water moves and fills up the land is shaped both by geologic processes and the political economy of building housing and infrastructure. Decisions made decades ago affect the landscape of hazard and risk in the present and near future.