Tulane AI professor to speak with inventor of the World Wide Web at New Orleans Book Festival

Nicholas Mattei finds it kind of weird that everyone is now talking about artificial intelligence all the time. He's been studying it for years. Still, he is always up to talking about it more, which he will do again at this year's New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University.

Mattei, an associate professor of computer science in the School of Science and Engineering at Tulane and co-director of the Center for Community-Engaged Artificial Intelligence, has spent most of his career studying AI, machine learning and data science, fields now in the public spotlight with the rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude.

At New Orleans Book Festival this year, he will discuss those topics and more when he moderates a panel with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Lady Rosemary Leith Berners-Lee, co-founders of the World Wide Web Foundation. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist best known for inventing the World Wide Web, which led to today's internet. Last year, he published a book on the topic, "This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web."

The festival conversation will look at the social architecture of the internet - trust, openness, access and governance - and discuss how those ideals can be sustained amid rapid technological and political change. The panel will take place at 10 a.m. on Friday, March 13, in Dixon Hall.

Mattei draws comparisons between his work with AI and the internet. The internet started, he said, from a desire to remove gatekeepers, connect communities and make everyone equal. And it worked.

"We got what the idea was, which was democratized access to the platform," he said.

But, as generative AI has surged, that same widespread accessibility has raised concerns about content moderation, fake news and the spread of misinformation.

"The real fear people have isn't that I'm making fake photos or fake movies for myself - it's that I'm doing something with them," Mattei said, noting that the use of AI-generated material raises many ethical questions.

At the Center for Community-Engaged AI, Mattei works with community members and local nonprofits to show how AI, and other technologies, can be used in the best, most responsible way.

"The best I can do is try to show that all these things can have positive benefits and can be used in positive ways," he said. He explored some of these topics in his own book, "Computing and Technology Ethics: Engaging through Science Fiction," which he uses as a basis for some of "The Digital Revolution, From Ada to AI," the course he co-teaches with Walter Isaacson, Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values in the School of Liberal Arts and co-chair of New Orleans Book Festival.

Mattei is eager to discuss those potential benefits with the curious people who come to the festival.

"The fact that it has such a broad remit pulls in a lot of different people, both from within New Orleans and outside of New Orleans," he said. "[The organizers] do a good job putting panels together that cross some topic lines in fun ways."

The New Orleans Book Festival will take place March 12-15 on Tulane's uptown campus and will bring together authors, scholars, journalists and community members for discussions spanning literature, history, politics and culture.