Forest Agostinelli, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and for the AI Institute at the University of South Carolina, will be one of five panelists for, “Artificial Intelligence: Game Changer or Game Over?” The event, sponsored by the Office of the Vice President of Research, will be held on Thursday, October 6 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Darla Moore School of Business’s W.W Hootie Johnson Hall. 

Agostinelli is an AI expert with a goal to design algorithms that solve real world problems and benefit humanity. He is currently focused on furthering knowledge discovery using AI. Agostinelli will present information on how AI affects people regarding fairness and bias, a fear that comes with implementing AI technology and how it will affect industry. His topics cover the event’s theme, which is focused on highlighting the dichotomy of AI implementation perspectives. 

“One aspect of the 'Game Changer' part could be this knowledge discovery. How can we discover new knowledge? How can we advance fields of science like medicine, physics and mathematics by collaborating with AI,” Agostinelli says. 

The “Game Over” part of the event title refers to the problems that AI experts are currently experiencing, such as security, human hesitance and implementation issues that plague the industry. 

“When it comes to game over, one of the things that I talk about is how AI just makes it easier to enact violence on people and invade people's privacy,” Agostinelli says.

Agostinelli’s main goal for the event is to gain a deeper insight into the work of his peers and how they can work together to connect different AI applications, problems and solutions.

“We want to talk about what our colleagues are doing in their research so people know what other people are doing on campus and what other people are thinking,” Agostinelli says. “The main point is to create this cohesiveness and this spirit of research at the University of South Carolina just to enhance it.”