Ethics and AI

CosmicAI's Mission

CosmicAI harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) to explore some of the leading mysteries of the universe, including dark matter and the fundamentals related to the search for life. We also seek to democratize access to astronomical data by developing a powerful AI-based astronomy “copilot” to streamline the scientific method in astrophysics and assist researchers with visualizing data, producing statistical analyses, understanding the scientific literature and more.

Overall, by building next-generation AI tools, we aim to accelerate discoveries related to the most basic human question: Where do we come from?

Ethics & AI

We recognize and appreciate that AI advances can also have unintended consequences and pose new risks.  As AI systems become more ubiquitous and capable, we must think not only on what AI can do, but also its broader impacts on our society and world.

For this reason, we endorse the development of ethical and responsible AI technologies with reflection on changes new advancements will bring, how those changes may unfold, and opportunities to anticipate, prevent, and  mitigate unintended consequences while still leveraging the benefits AI provides.

Leveraging Partnerships

CosmicAI brings together a strong interdisciplinary team of astronomers and AI researchers, collaborating universities, and partner organizations with a shared vision  and commitment to the design, building, and evaluation of ethical and responsible AI technologies. This includes a broad and diverse foundation of knowledge, experience, and perspectives. We seek to grow transformative AI advances with the overarching goal to increase the accessibility of astronomy data and knowledge for researchers, students, and the public.

We leverage partnerships between academia, national facilities, nonprofits, and industry to develop capabilities that enable astronomical researchers to conceptualize, define, and execute research projects via trustworthy, efficient, robust, and explainable AI methods. Ethics conversations are integrated into our research, education, and outreach programs.

Collaborative Innovation

CosmicAI is led by the University of Texas at Austin, and a key partner in our work on ethical and responsible AI is UT’s Good Systems, a cross-campus responsible AI initiative launched by UT’s president in 2019. Today, Good Systems boasts over 30 academic units and over 120 actively engaged researchers with a shared vision of socially beneficial human + AI partnerships driven by values of agency, equity, trust, transparency, democracy, and justice.

To further enlarge the reach and scale of impact, CosmicAI also collaborates with non-academic partners, such as the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), a non-profit AI research institute committed to foundational AI research and innovation to deliver real-world impact through large-scale open models and data. CosmicAI fully-embraces AI2’s value statement about the importance of open science: “True openness means more than open source. By keeping an open mind and sharing everything we make, we bring the AI community together to answer research questions and build solutions that advance the whole field together.”