As AI increasingly shapes how people learn, work, and communicate, ensuring that these technologies are safe and responsive to the diversity of human experience has become critical. This talk examines the promise of AI for diverse communities and the ways current systems fall short, including by reinforcing cultural, linguistic, gender, and disability biases and shifting users toward dominant Western norms. Vashistha will conclude with concrete pathways toward safer and more culturally responsive AI, including community-centered safety evaluations and pluralistic approaches to AI alignment.
Bio:
Aditya Vashistha is an assistant professor of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University, where he directs the Cornell Global AI Initiative, an interdisciplinary, university-wide effort to integrate global perspectives into the design, development, evaluation, and governance of AI. His research builds and studies AI technologies that advance equity and improve socioeconomic outcomes for marginalized communities. His work has led to widely used systems impacting over 300,000 people in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, earning multiple best paper awards. His work has been recognized with prestigious accolades, including the Facebook Access Innovation Prize, the UW College of Engineering Award, the Meta Fellowship, Google Faculty Award, Microsoft Faculty Award, and the President’s and Provost’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Service at Cornell. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington, where his dissertation received the William Chan Memorial Dissertation Award and the WAGS/ProQuest Innovation in Technology Award.
This talk will be livestreamed and recorded. It will be posted to the CITP website, the CITP YouTube channel and the Princeton University Media Central channel.
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