National University of Singapore establishes institute to boost AI research for public good

When a user types in prompts such as “surgeon” or “doctor” into artificial intelligence (AI) text-to-image generators such as Dall-e 2 and Stable Diffusion, most images will depict men. And from the text prompt “office assistant”, most images generated will be of women, reflecting gender stereotypes.

Such ethical issues in generative AI are one problem the National University of Singapore (NUS) is working to tackle through its new AI research institute.

Launched yesterday, the NUS AI Institute (NAII) will conduct research on how to address the ethical concerns and risks associated with AI and to apply AI across various domains such as education, healthcare, finance and sustainability. More than 20 principal investigators from a wide range of disciplines across NUS – including business, computer science, data science, engineering, medicine, law and sustainability – will be driving more than 10 research programmes at the institute, NUS said in a statement.

NAII will provide a “go-to” platform for the cross-sharing of ideas and collaboration on AI initiatives within the university through seminars, workshops and outreach events that people from different domains can attend.

“Research is not tense or boring.

It’s actually very exciting and very passionate,” said Professor Mohan Kankanhalli, director of NAII, adding that he enjoys discussions with his students, who often disagree with him.

“That’s how science advances. Not by somebody all-knowing saying this is how it should be done.

Research should involve healthy, vigorous, open conversations, debates, contradictions, a little bit of irreverence.

“So we are going to nurture this very vibrant, intellectual atmosphere we already have in our schools and faculties, but also in this institute, so that we can do the best possible AI research.”

The institute, which is housed within the university’s School of Computing (SOC), will also benefit experts, researchers and students from different domains looking to develop a project involving AI.