Thursday, February 26, 2026

Poster to advertise Real-World Effects of AI discussionAnita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Real-World Effects of AI

Panelists

Hannah Beckler, Business Insider
John MacCormick, Dickinson College
Amy McKiernan, Dickinson College
Fengqi You, Cornell University

Last July, the current US administration announced an action plan for “Winning the AI Race” which includes almost 100 federal policy actions, among them the dissolution of federal regulations around AI development and the promotion of rapid buildouts of data centers. This panel explores what the AI boom means for all of us, from scientific research, healthcare diagnostics and automated content creation to its effects on public utilities and the environment. The speakers will discuss different applications of generative AI and a range of ethical concerns its use poses.

This program is presented by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Hannah Beckler is an award-winning investigative reporter at Business Insider. Her work has been honored with a National Magazine Award and the Hillman Award in Newspaper Journalism, among others. Most recently, she reported on the data center construction boom’s impact on water, power, pollution, and local economies.

 

 

John MacCormick is professor of computer science at Dickinson College. His  work in computer science spans several sub-fields, including artificial intelligence, computer vision, large-scale distributed systems, computer science education, and the public understanding of computer science. He is the author of four books, including Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today’s Computers and Thinking AI: How Artificial Intelligence Emulates Human Understanding. Dr. MacCormick holds 19 US patents on novel computer technologies and is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles; his Nine Algorithms book has been translated into eight languages.

 

Amy McKiernan is associate professor of philosophy at Dickinson College. McKiernan teaches Practical Ethics, Biomedical Ethics, The Ethics of Punishment and Forgiveness,  Environmental Ethics, Existentialism, Fiction and Moral Philosophy, and Ethical Theory. She is writing a book that argues for the value of bringing care ethics together with the increasingly influential therapeutic approach, internal family systems. My recent publications include “Queer Care and Pleasure Activism” in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Care Ethics, “Teaching Moral Emotions” with Daniel Haggerty in Teaching Ethics, “Obstacles to Empathetic Listening After Sexual Violence” with Elspeth Campbell ’18 in Hypatia, and “Blaming from Inside the Birdcage: Strawsonian Accounts of Blame and Feminist Care Ethics” in Feminist Philosophy Quarterly. McKiernan also serves as the director of the Ethics Across Campus & the Curriculum program and currently leading work on the Dickinson Core Values Project.

 

You_Fengqi REIS_D20181023JR1,CU CBE prof

Fengqi You is the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor in Energy Systems Engineering at Cornell University. He holds affiliations with multiple Graduate Fields at Cornell, including Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Operations Research and Information Engineering, Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Applied Mathematics. Within Cornell, he serves as the chair of Ph.D. Studies in Systems Engineering, co-director of the Cornell University AI for Science Institute (CUAISci), co-director of the Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture (CIDA), and director of the Cornell AI for Sustainability Initiative (CAISI). Before joining Cornell in 2016, he worked at Argonne National Laboratory’s Mathematics and Computer Science Division and served as a faculty member at Northwestern University. His research focuses on fundamental theories and methods of systems engineering, with applications in materials informatics, smart manufacturing, digital agriculture, energy systems, and sustainability. Fengqi has an h-index of 91 and has authored over 300 refereed articles in journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Sustainability, Nature Food, Nature Communications, Science Advances, and PNAS. His research has garnered editorial highlights in Science and Nature, featured on dozens of journal covers (e.g., Energy & Environmental Science), and covered by leading media outlets (e.g., New York Times, BBC, Reuters, Washington Post, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Daily Mail, The Guardian, Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg, Scientific American, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Hill, CNN, Harvard Business Review, New Scientist, and National Geographic).  He is an award-winning scholar and teacher, having received over 25 major national and international awards in the past six years from leading professional organizations such as the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), American Chemical Society (ACS), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), and American Automatic Control Council (AACC), in addition to multiple best paper awards. Selected ones include the NSF CAREER Award (2016), AIChE Environmental Division Early Career Award (2017), AIChE Research Excellence in Sustainable Engineering Award (2017), Computing and Systems Technology (CAST) Outstanding Young Researcher Award from AIChE (2018), Cornell Engineering Research Excellence Award (2018), ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship Award (2018), AIChE Excellence in Process Development Research Award (2019), AIChE Innovations in Green Process Engineering Award (2020), Mr. & Mrs. Richard F. Tucker Excellence in Teaching Award (2020), ASEE Curtis W. McGraw Research Award (2020), O. Hugo Schuck Award from AACC (2020), AIChE Sustainable Engineering Forum Education Award (2021), AIChE George Lappin Award (2022), Stratis V. Sotirchos Lectureship Award by the Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas (FORTH) (2022), and the Lawrence K. Cecil Award in Environmental Chemical Engineering (2024). He serves as an editor of Computers & Chemical Engineering; associate editor of the AAAS journal Science Advances, Applied Energy, and IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology; consulting editor of the AIChE Journal; subject editor of Advances in Applied Energy; guest editor of Energy, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews; and was on the editorial boards of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, PRX Energy, and more. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), Fellow of the AIChE, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

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