Welcome to the first newsletter from the Center for Humanistic Inquiry into AI and Uncertainty (AI&U). The Center has officially been up and running since January 2026, but we’ve just launched our website and newsletter so it felt like the right time for a (re)introduction.

Why Now?

It’s a daunting task to start up a new academic Center at one of the country’s leading universities. It’s doubly daunting when the focus of that Center is a technology – artificial intelligence (which I’ve placed in between em dashes just to make you wonder if this was AI-generated, but also included meta commentary in brackets to assure you this is indeed human-powered) – that seems to have sucked up all the oxygen in so many rooms over the past few years. Keeping up with the speed of AI developments alone is a full time job, so finding proper footing from which to establish a new research hub devoted to critical humanistic research on AI’s cultural, social, economic, ontological and epistemological impacts raises a host of difficult-to-answer questions: How do we distinguish our Center from the many other AI Centers popping up to address the current moment? How can a Center that focuses on humanistic inquiry into AI technologies contribute to discussions taking place on campus in the physical sciences, engineering, and computing that are already driving new projects and investments at UW–Madison (like the new College of Computing and AI)? How should we position this Center to make it valuable to our academic community in the humanities (and beyond), and to the communities who make up our city and our state (and beyond)? Perhaps most importantly, what should our Center’s acronym be? Un-AI? CHIAIU? AI&U?

Fortunately, our Center didn’t materialize over night; our steering committee has been wrestling with these specific questions for the past 3 years and with larger questions about the intersections of technology and humanity for much longer. AI&U started as a working group, originally assembled by the Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities, Grant Nelsestuen. The group included faculty from Philosophy, History, the iSchool and Communication Arts. Its goal was establishing infrastructure and connections for supporting and promoting the impressive work already being done on artificial intelligence and its historical antecedents by humanities scholars, and forging new kinds of connections and collaborations for future work. Led by the significant efforts of Dr. Annette Zimmermann (Philosophy) and Dr. Devin Kennedy (History of Science, Medicine, and Technology), along with Clinton Castro (iSchool), Jamie Goodrich (Philosophy), Alan Rubel (iSchool) and Jeremy Morris (Communication Arts), and the grant-building wizardry of Associate Dean Nelsestuen, the team secured an NEH grant through the Humanities Research Centers on Artificial Intelligence program. The original working group continues its involvement as the steering committee for the Center, overseeing activities, events, plans, and working with the advisory board on the Center’s overall direction.

If you follow marketing materials and popular discourse from the leading AI companies, AI is simultaneously a technological boon the likes of which we have never seen before and a complete and utter threat to all things we hold dear (e.g. work, relationships, the environment, security, etc.). Or, put more formally, as we did in our grant documents: “Born out of a sector that puts a premium on disruption, AI is closely connected to the concept of uncertainty. ‘Moving fast and breaking things’—the motto that continues to drive much of the contemporary technology sector—has encouraged a public perception of AI that oscillates between awe in light of unforeseen technological capabilities and widespread concern about the potentially harmful, uncontrollable, and unpredictable social impacts in a wide range of domains like education, housing, hiring, lending, production chains, healthcare, and criminal justice.”

As historians and scholars, we’ve seen similar promises and fears drive countless previous technologies and we believe that a critical approach to AI requires looking past simple boosterism or doomerism and reckoning instead with the complex nuances “artificially” “intelligent” technologies present – with the scare quotes reminding us that research is also needed on the very metaphors and concepts we use to talk about these technologies. Too much commentary on today’s AI technologies involves attributing human activities and practices – thinking, attacking, chatting, deceiving, answering, etc. – to computational processes that should more aptly be labelled pattern recognition or prediction. This tidy anthropomorphizing results in stories about AI that serve to stoke fears or fuel hype cycles rather than encourage a proper analysis of what these technologies actually do, why they work or fail, and how they might be made better.

As we noted in the grant application, “AI’s uncertain future requires thinking beyond purely technological solutions and simplistic, context-independent value frameworks. Instead, holistic research that focuses on AI’s socio-technical dimensions and that considers multiple context-sensitive values (such as equity, trustworthiness, transparency, privacy, and civil rights) is urgently needed.” Given the many shocking headlines generated about AI in the past few weeks, months and years, it’s clearer now than ever that methods and insights from the humanities are central to this task.

The Center’s Purpose

The Center’s primary purpose is to support exciting and innovative research projects based in the humanities that provide critical and engaged research on the sociotechnical impact of AI technologies. We’ve got 4 research fellows already hard at work (since January 2026) on exciting projects with an external fellow and a graduate RA fellow joining at the start of the 2026-27 academic year. If you’ve got a research project that aligns with the work happening at AI&U, we’d encourage you to check out the calls for our next round of proposals, and to apply to be part of the Center’s work in the coming years.

AI&U also serves as a collaborative hub that brings together humanities scholars studying the impacts of AI and connects them with the wider activities, events and research taking place on campus in the physical sciences, education, engineering and computer science. To this end, we’ll be hosting events, lectures and other workshops and every second year we’ll be hosting a large public summit that brings together members of the UW–Madison community, local tech industry, non-profit and government representatives. We’re always looking for additional partners, presenters and community members to share their work/perspectives so if your research or professional role intersects with the Center, please get in touch.

Finally, AI&U – and the work its researchers produce – is meant to provide an antidote to the hype and hyperbole that often drives new tech innovations. While it’s undeniable that there has been rapid investment and deployment of AI technologies, the adoption of AI tools by consumers and everyday users has been much more uneven, erratic, frustrated and mundane. There exists, at the moment, massive uncertainties around how these technologies, and the unrealistic business models on which they currently rely, will ultimately end up serving and strengthening workers, educators, artists, businesses, etc. There are huge unanswered concerns around environmental impacts, increased surveillance and datafication of previously private information, legal implications of tools built on swaths of copyrighted material and the erosion of media and news environments. These and many other uncertainties are compounded by the rapid release of new models with new capabilities, each accompanied with seemingly apocalyptic press materials that, oddly, present threats to human existence as a key selling point.

Universities like UW–Madison and Centers like AI&U must be careful not get swept up in the slop (and here, I mean slop both as actual “slop”, but also the false or unrealistic promises and threats that circulate around AI). The opportunities, connections and values that academia provides can offer alternative path for helping society address the challenges and opportunities new technologies bring. Rather than embracing a “move fast and break things” ethos, we want to reaffirm the value of measured analysis, research-informed strategies, and a deep appreciation for the historical, cultural, and social lessons we can learn from the past; in other words, all the qualities that are foundational to humanistic inquiry.

What’s Next?

Our goal is to create a community, here at UW–Madison and beyond, that can bring different disciplinary and experiential expertise to the many uncertainties AI technologies raise. We look forward to hosting lectures, workshops and other events that will spark conversations on the topics above and many more. We also look forward to sharing the work our current fellows have been doing, and welcoming whole new crops of fellows and projects in the coming years. While its hard not to get swept up as the spread and implementation of AI technologies barrel forward, we hope you’ll join us in finding the value that can come from siting with uncertainty.