5 years since Partnership to Advance Responsible Technology’s launch, its head says AI has gone mainstream

The Partnership to Advance Responsible Technology (PART) set out five years ago to think of the potential downsides of new technologies, especially artificial intelligence, balanced with the desire to see the Pittsburgh tech sector grow.

What’s changed since then? For one, most people have probably heard of AI, and have an opinion on how it should be used.

From its earliest days in 2018, the nonprofit think tank — which consists of policy makers, academics and philanthropists — focused most of its efforts on artificial intelligence. As AI technology has gone from concept to a more accessible reality with tools like ChatGPT, PART cofounder and Executive Director Lance Lindauer told Technical.ly that in those five years, the organization has broadened its goals from conversations about ethics, to how new technologies can responsibly be incorporated into society.

“We still have a long way to think about not only the downstream ramifications of what the [technology] does to or for society, but also how it’s being developed,” Lindauer said. “The research and development and design process, those areas … have so many questions to be answered even before we can get to that deployment and governance stage downstream.”

To make the best decisions, Lindauer said, he believes it’ll take input from technologists, policy makers and elected officials. In the meantime, PART has made it a point to keep the conversation going within the region via educational efforts, by conducting research, and working in the conducting and advisement space to explore what responsible technology should mean in the present and future.

In early 2022, the org published a comprehensive 86-page report on the future challenges and potential solutions of Pittsburgh’s tech and innovation economy: “How Pittsburgh Can Build a Better Innovation and Emerging-Technology Economy Through Connectivity, Density, and Collaboration.” And last June, it hosted the inaugural Responsible Technology Summit.

As for specific industries where PART’s work can be applied: “We’ve been very fortunate to have some trusted partners in the defense space,” he said. “When you think about responsible uses of technology, how defense departments or militaries or whatnot conceive of and deploy technology, you want to be the most ethical and responsible.”

Lindauer said he couldn’t get specific on some of the work PART has been doing in those spaces just yet, but he did note that another way the org has seen technology change over the years has been due to the pandemic. With so many people having worked — or still working — remotely, he said that change in structure has forced people to reexamine their relationship to technology and need other forms of tech to be developed at a faster rate.

Although the region and society at large are still in the earliest stages of their conversations about artificial intelligence, Lindauer said that the biggest change in five years ago vs. now is that with AI being more readily available, people are more willing to discuss the technology. A conversation involving areas from all different segments of society, Lindauer said, will be needed moving forward as the tech seeps into more of our personal and professional lives.

“There needs to be a lot of cross-sector work, and a lot of stakeholder engagement, by Big Tech and by governments and by nations that are working with one another to talk about this,” Lindauer said. “So I would say it’s still really early days. But everything that we’re seeing is folks are wanting to have those conversations today.”