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The challenge of producing a magazine about artificial intelligence is making sure that what we’re writing in the summer is still relevant in the fall, when it arrives in your mailbox. After all, the technology and its capabilities are evolving faster than we can process their impact.

CMDI Founding Dean Lori Bergen. Photo by Kimberly Coffin.

But it’s a somewhat easier task when you work at a place like CMDI, where so many different people from diverse disciplines come together to share ideas, understand opportunities and solve problems. So, in this issue, we set out to showcase how the unique structure of our college—a collection of different, but related, disciplines—gives our faculty, students and alumni advantages in adapting to the wild changes introduced by A.I.

Some of the work our community is doing is truly novel, like student and faculty research into how newsrooms are using A.I. at the anchor desk, how the court system can respond to deepfakes and generated content, and what A.I. means for accessibility. But what I find most interesting is when we bring different perspectives together, to appreciate A.I.’s impact on artwork, architecture, advertising and more.

A.I. offers promise in productivity and discovery, but it comes with ethical, environmental and economic challenges that must be fully understood alongside its capabilities. It’s about to become even more prominent in our curriculum as we develop academic programs in A.I. literacy as part of our new five-year strategic plan. Our college’s broad worldview and interdisciplinary approach gives us the ability to answer the big questions around this technology—for our students, our alumni and society. ÌýÌý

Reading this issue inspired me about what’s to come. I hope when you’ve finished it, you feel the same.Ìý
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Lori Bergen, PhD
Founding Dean
College of Communication, Media, Design and InformationÌý