By Dr. Samir Abu Rumman
One of the places that attracts me the most at Princeton University is the Princeton Neuroscience Institute (PNI), established in 2004. It includes advanced laboratories and facilities for cutting-edge research in neuroscience, intersecting with diverse fields such as biology, psychology, physics, and computer science. Among the significant research areas undertaken by the institute is NeuroAI, which combines neuroscience and computing.
The institute offers grants to many professors and students to conduct human research on topics such as vision, cognition, thinking, and others. Driven by my curiosity to discover the details of Princeton’s experience, I follow some of the research topics at the institute and register to participate in them.
In one experiment, I was greeted by researcher Rose Guingrich, whom I had not known before, and it later turned out that she specializes in artificial intelligence research! After I entered one of the many rooms at the institute; each room was different in its materials and tools housed.
Rose asked me to participate in a computer conversation experiment within a chat program with someone. At that time, I spoke with a New Zealander, discussing several general topics and some related to her country, including the terrorist attack on Muslim worshippers at dawn prayers a couple of years ago and the achievements of New Zealand’s young Prime Minister, who was later hosted by Princeton’s School of International and Public Affairs.
After the conversation, I answered some questions from researcher Rose, only to be surprised when she told me that I had been conversing with a machine on the chat, and not a human as I had expected! The carefully crafted responses and the breadth of topics we discussed were far from traditional program responses. I was amazed at the level of advancement in the field of artificial intelligence that made this machine mimic human traits to this extent. Of course, Chat GPT was not known at that time, so my astonishment and amazement increased then!
This qualitative leap is the result of long research spanning decades, on which vast amounts of money have been spent. Many entities have contributed to it, including Princeton University, which has 40 years of experience in basic research in artificial intelligence and the development of its practical applications in areas such as machine learning and robotics.
As a research university, Princeton recently contributed to this field by launching the Princeton Language and Intelligence Initiative (PLI), aimed at gathering talents and allocating resources to develop a basic understanding of artificial intelligence models, and enabling their application in research and education across academic disciplines. This includes studying the societal and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence and developing methods to avoid any potential harm.
Princeton University’s leadership in artificial intelligence research and its application on its campus was recently crowned with the signing of an agreement between the university and the government of New Jersey to establish an integrated center for artificial intelligence research. This center aims to bring together researchers, industry leaders, startups, other state universities and their colleges, all with the goal of enhancing research and development in this field to achieve a positive impact on society, benefit from the treasures of modern artificial intelligence technologies, and address fears about it!
This article was published on Alanba daily newspaper and translated first for Generation1.ca with the assistance of an AI translation tool and with some human editing.
Samir Abu-Rumman, PhD, is a visiting research scholar at Princeton University, USA, with extensive years of experience in research, education, and development in different countries. He is the supervisor of “World of Opinions” in Kuwait, Jordan, and the U.S., has led and supervised different regional and global research projects for organizations such as the World Values Survey and Arab Barometer for Princeton University and also last participated as a keynote panelist in our fall 2023 virtual insights career fair and case competition.
