Tech Talks

How should society value and steward knowledge that is costly to create yet once shared often defies scarcity and becomes priceless? What do we really mean when we claim that “information wants to be free,” and how does today’s information landscape complicate this ideal? 

In this conversation-and-debate session we will unpack the dual nature of knowledge: as a market commodity that allows creators and publishers to exist; and as a public good for libraries, education, and projects like Wikipedia. After a brief scene-setting overview and a rapid survey of key ideas from information economics and commons theory,  we will move into conversation and debate about real-world cases: paywalled journals and open access mandates, web scraping for creating large language models, and the role of libraries and collective knowledge projects as civic infrastructures. The session is designed to be engaging yet grounded, equipping the Kenyon College community to sharpen its collective stance on the future of knowledge.

Monica Westin is a librarian whose career spans roles at information institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, including work at Google developing copyright policy and the Google Scholar index; at university libraries in the United States and United Kingdom serving researchers and learners; advancing digital preservation infrastructure at the Internet Archive; and now driving open policy development at Cambridge University Press. She also serves as a trustee of Wikimedia UK, championing free and open access to knowledge worldwide.

Join us on Thursday, April 30, for this exciting talk by Westin hosted by the Program in Computing. The presentation will begin in Samuel Mather 201. We hope to see you there!

Seniors in COMP 401 will be presenting their capstone projects to the Kenyon community. Come hear about all the exciting projects our seniors have been researching.

Join us on Thursday, April 30, from 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. in Chalmers Library 300 and 302 to check out the research projects computing students completed this semester. We hope to see you there!

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a key tool in scientific research, but it brings challenges like trust and over-reliance. In this talk, I will discuss how people use AI for data-driven decisions, emphasizing the need to balance AI suggestions with human critical thinking. I will share insights from studies on human-AI interaction and suggest ways to improve explanations and transparency, helping users think critically about AI recommendations. While large language models (LLMs) are often highlighted in AI discussions, I will place them in a broader context and explore their use in data visualization. Finally, I will consider how the scientific community can create AI systems that enhance discoveries while promoting careful and trustworthy reasoning.

Alvitta Ottley is an associate professor of computer science & engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research combines computer science, psychology and design to improve how people make decisions with data, focusing on transparency, trust and effective human–AI collaboration. Ottley received the NSF CRII Award (2018) for visualization in medical decision-making, the NSF CAREER Award for context-aware visual analytics, and the 2022 EuroVis Early Career Award. She is a co-PI of the NSF Institute for Data-Driven Dynamical Design (ID4), where her work advances human–AI teaming in scientific discovery. Her work appears in top visualization venues, including ACM CHI and IEEE VIS.

Join us on Thursday, Sept. 18, for this exciting Tech Talk hosted by the Program in Computing. The presentation will begin in Tomsich 101 and there will be pizza. We hope to see you there!