February 20, 2026 11:30 AM
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2:30 pm
205 South Hall
Our theme this semester is “AI On The Ground.” This event will frame our upcoming discussions on how the reality of AI systems often deviates from the planned or expected. AFOG’s Spring programming aims to bring together perspectives from practitioners and academics, connecting theory to hands-on practices to explore mechanisms for transparency.
In the front half of the semester, we aim to co-design and gather information to populate an AI use case inventory. Researchers have found that “few repositories contribute to what the literature has termed ‘meaningful transparency’, meaning that most repositories do not disclose pertinent and sufficient information to evaluate AI systems.” In addition, narrow definitions and under-reporting further reduce what the public knows about government use of AI. For example, while California uses algorithms to assess eligibility for unemployment benefits and predict whether incarcerated people will commit crimes again, California agencies reported zero high-risk systems in use in 2025.
Our goal in these sessions is to envision and prototype a use case inventory that can serve the needs of diverse stakeholders including residents, policymakers, researchers, workers, journalists, and government agencies delivering public services.
The Program: The kickoff will begin with a series of provocations to frame the semester’s work. Following these opening remarks, Richmond Wong (Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Media, and Communication) will lead a design workshop to elicit and articulate essential criteria for a public AI registry.
This session sets the stage for a semester of action, including upcoming sessions on auditing public-sector AI and a specialized training on filing Public Records Act requests. We plan to populate the AI use case registry during several hands-on sessions throughout the term.
Optional Pre-Readings:
Opening Provocations:
Richmond Wong is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Media, and Communication. He directs the Creating Ethics Infrastructures Lab where his research seeks to create social, cultural, and organizational environments that can support technologists and designers in ethical decision making. This includes creating design approaches that propose alternate ways to consider human values, supporting worker and community-led actions, improving organizational ethics review practices, and understanding the role of law and policy. Richmond's work draws from human computer interaction and science & technology studies. He completed his PhD at the University of California Berkeley School of Information and a postdoc at the UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity.