As AI increasingly shapes how people learn, work, and communicate, ensuring that these technologies are safe and responsive to the diversity of human experience has become critical. This talk examines the promise of AI for diverse communities and the ways current systems fall short, including by reinforcing cultural, linguistic, gender, and disability biases and shifting users toward dominant Western norms. Vashistha will conclude with concrete pathways toward safer and more culturally responsive AI, including community-centered safety evaluations and pluralistic approaches to AI alignment.
Bio: Aditya Vashistha is an assistant professor of information science at Cornell University, where he directs the Cornell Global AI Initiative, a university-wide effort to bring global perspectives into the design, evaluation, and governance of AI. His research develops and studies AI systems that advance equity for historically marginalized communities, particularly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. His work has resulted in widely deployed systems that have reached more than half million people and has received multiple best paper awards. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Facebook Access Innovation Prize, Google and Microsoft Faculty Awards, and Cornell’s President’s and Provost’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Service. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington.
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