This Open Access Week event centers on the ethics of reuse of community-based labor, including for AI projects and products. Madiha Zahrah Choksi (Columbia University Libraries) takes a historical approach, and contextualizes LLMs as tools produced through community-based labor, and compares mainstream AI technologies to historical tools that have long performed similar functions. Zachary McDowell (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Matthew Vetter (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) explore the “re-alienation of the commons” and the labor dynamics within Wikimedia projects, including ethical implications and historical context of community-driven knowledge production.

Panelists:

Madiha Zahrah Choks is the Digital Learning and Emerging Technologies Specialist  at Scholarly Communication, Columbia University Libraries. Madiha is a Ph.D student at Cornell University and her interests include: digital research methods, 3D Modeling and Printing, AR/VR equipment, and curricular integration.

Zachary McDowell is Assistant Professor of Communication at University of Illinois Chicago. His research focuses on access and advocacy in digitally mediated peer production spaces. His emerging media interests run along the technological gamut including video games, to Wikipedia, data representations, ethics, education, and media manipulation. His work brings together a core thread around engaged, community-based, and transformative practices in the digital age. Prior to joining UIC, Zach was a research fellow at the Wiki Education Foundation, studying student learning outcomes and digital literacy using Wikipedia.

Matthew Vetter is Professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His academic interests include: Digital Rhetoric, Critical Literacy and Theory, Composition Theory and Pedagogy, Internet Culture, Digital Humanities, Multimodal Composition, Creative Writing, Wikipedia Studies. He has published and edited scholarly work. Since 2011, he has partnered with the Wiki Education Foundation to encourage academic participation in Wikipedia, both by designing student writing assignments and by mentoring other educators through workshops, edit-a-thons, and collaborative learning projects.

This panel is organized by Columbia University Libraries, including Barnard Library and the Gottesman Libraries, as part of Open Access Week 2024.

Register HERE.

Where: Online

Poster Image: Generated by Google DeepMind.

Information on Open Access Week may also be found here.