Creating a Chatbot for Data Analytics with OpenAI; AI Art Ethics: A Cornerstone Debate in the Realm of Rapid AI Development

As AI continues to advance, employment becomes a larger issue for humans who might be displaced by new AI technologies. For example, recent progress with generative AI has allowed people to generate snippets of simple code automatically, requiring little to no previous programming or software engineering background. However, this also raises a key question: when is AI use appropriate, and do its benefits outweigh the costs? This is especially important to consider as AI could potentially introduce negative side effects to certain industries despite their technological capabilities. My technical and STS project analyzes the issue of AI use in two different industries. Specifically, my technical project explores the incorporation of AI in automating data analytics, particularly through code generation that is able to output relevant statistics to viewers. My STS project focuses on AI use in art, examining the harmful effects that AI art can have on the art industry and artist employment.
In the field of data analytics, procedures like data cleaning and data transformation can make work tedious and often time consuming. For my technical project, I incorporated OpenAI’s generative AI model to create a personal data assistant for users, specifically for hiring managers to view statistics on employee hiring and retention. This project was in the form of a chatbot, which is able to store and analyze a dataset that is uploaded by the user. To set up the chatbot, I assisted the development of its backend infrastructure and incorporation of cloud services. This allowed for the storage of datasets and ability for users to interact with the chatbot. This process was also optimized to ensure that all interactions were as efficient as possible with little latency. After its development, this project was ultimately deployed to various client organizations, where hiring managers were able to begin utilizing the chatbot to view the desired data analytics.
Meanwhile, the creation of AI art has had far reaching ethical consequences on both artists and the greater art industry. I believe this is an important area of research as AI tools are being deployed rapidly in fields like art, often with little beforehand discussion on their societal impact. Additionally, AI art represents a cornerstone of the debate on AI ethics for the way various legal and social issues are connected through it. In terms of my research methods, I analyzed multiple case studies and written documents related to AI art, which allowed me to gain insight into the way AI art is characterized from different perspectives. This collection of evidence included legal definitions of copyright, press release statements made by companies introducing new AI art tools, as well as art competition rules that allow/disallow AI use. Ultimately, it was found that AI art has a variety of potential negative effects on artists, including lack of compensation for work and loss of employment. However, these tools also continue to face little regulation due to ambiguous copyright laws and a general lack of awareness of AI tools.
I believe my technical project was able to successfully demonstrate the incorporation of AI into a data analytics tool, as it was able to reduce the workload that its users had to perform when analyzing a dataset. For my STS research, I also was able to develop greater insight into the AI art controversy, specifically focusing on its impact on the art community. However, one limitation of my research was the way I focused separately on two different fields where AI was incorporated, which may lead to a lack of generalizability in terms of my results. For future research, it may be helpful to explore a larger range of industries where AI has been applied in order to gain a wider perspective of AI use. Additionally, it may be helpful to research the various use cases of AI that might be beneficial, as this could provide more insight into the ways AI could be more positively adopted.

Acknowledgements: I’d like to thank Professors Wylie and Foley for assisting me with reviewing my STS papers and providing guidance on how to conduct my research. Additionally, I’m also grateful for my mentors, Matt V. and Ryan M., who led me through my internship and technical project.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

Technical Advisor: Rosanne Vrugtman

STS Advisor: Caitlin Wylie