Talk:Katherine Elkins

Revised Draft:Katherine_Elkins

[The author of the draft posted the following on my Talk page and for convenience I am copying it, and my response, here:]

Hello!

Thank you for so quickly reviewing the draft of this proposed Wiki article. I carefully read, researched, and revised the Draft to address your primary concern regarding 'Notable' and meeting the minimum threshold for several of the 8 academic criteria. To address the 'notable' and academic criteria, I had to be a bit more foward but tried to focus on an organized list of impact, results, and contributions rather than a laundry list of CV items. I hope I struck a balance - please advise if not.

The new draft has many more supporting details and authoratative secondary sources with notable academics, researchers, and thought leaders that Elkins has engaged with over recent years. Many of the details like upcoming papers and talks at Yale, Harvard, Reed College, and others did not have authoratative links so I left them out.

My main concern is being transparent about COI at this point. To avoid this, I initially engaged a service to navigate this issue. They turned out to be a scam, so I am trying to write the article myself. It's complex to communicate to a third party because there are so many details and subtle judgement calls. I flagged this article as a potential COI when submitting and tagged my user page with "

This user has publicly declared that they have a conflict of interest regarding the Wikipedia article Katherine Elkins.

". I hope the merits of article speak to the authenticity.

There are very few women who are thought leaders in AI and tech in general, so I hope this will be a service to the research community and beyond to add more voices to discussions around AI. It's a bit of a catch-22 and as academics, we generally are not very good at having a voice beyond the narrow confines of academic echo chambers. With the rapid advance of AI in everything from lethal autonomous weapons to potential large-scale disemployment, there is a urgent need to bring more informed humanistic perspectives to the public discussions on AI.

Please advise on any next steps.

Gratefully,

J J2000ai (talk) 23:27, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi J2000ai, thanks for the ping. Discussion about the page is best posted on the Talk page of the draft, so it is most easily seen and accessible to all editors and reviewers, so I have copied your post over to there, and responded there. Cabrils (talk) 00:40, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

My response:

Hi J2000ai,

Well done on progressing the page, however I am still seeing several issues. To establish Elkin's notability (as defined), we need to see articles about her rather than by her. Please review the (voluminous) references accordingly.

Also note that many of the references are not from sources that are considered reliable and should be removed (like LinkedIn). As I noted in my previous comment on the draft, the draft tends to read too much like a CV, which Wikipedia is not.

Further, and again, as I suggested in my previous comment on the draft:

(1) could you please post WP:THREE here;

(2) could please identify with specificity, exactly which criteria you believe the page meets (eg "I think the page now meets WP:NPROF criteria #3, because XXXXX");

(3) as requested by Johannes Maximilian, could you please identify whether Elkins has a full professor appointment (including a named chair appointment)?

Thank you for your COI declaration.

Look forward to your response. Cabrils (talk) 00:55, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello!

Thanks again for the feedback. The first feedback asked for supporting details for academic notability, so I added lots many links of peer-reviewed papers and famous academics/thought leaders that she has spoken alongside at events. There were more that were not adequately sourced (like the LinkedIn I removed per your request).

I'll update the Draft to include these facts that I forgot/missed after I hear from your feedback:

• Andrew Mellon Professorship
• National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Distinguished Teaching Professor
• Whiting Award
• Founding Director of the Comparative World Literature Program

Per your 3 requests:

(1) The 3 most significant/recent sources:

==================================================

a. Her 2022 Cambridge Univ Press book that is the first to use AI to analyze the emotional plot in stories/narratives.

• https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/shapes-of-stories/3047F01956467FA981DB9F14A18A6725

b. The Whitehouse/US NIST AI Safety Institute as Principle Investigator for the Modern Language Association (an association of 25,000 literature, linguists, translators, etc academics worldwide)

• https://news.mla.hcommons.org/2024/04/16/mla-will-participate-in-department-of-commerce-consortium-dedicated-to-ai-safety/

c. IBM-Notre Dame AI Tech Ethics Award (1 of 14 worldwide) as Principle Investigator

• https://techethicslab.nd.edu/news/notre-dameibm-technology-ethics-lab-awards-more-than-900-000-to-support-collaborative-research-projects-between-teams-of-notre-dame-faculty-and-international-scholars/

(2) Point by point address of WP:NPROF Criteria

==================================================

WP:NPROF:1

==========

Elkins developed a significant new methodology for using AI for Computational Literary Studies (per 1.a) and her numerous peer-reviewed articles and presentations at leading conferences/journals)

Was the first to publish using LLM for literary and narrative research and coined the term "AI DH" (or AI Digital Humanities)

WP:NPROF:2.

==========

Elkins received 1 of 14 international IBM Tech Ethics Award (per 1.c above)

The 2001 National Winner of the A. Owen Aldridge

WP:NPROF:3

==========

Selected as a Principal Investigator for the Whitehouse/NIST US AI Safety Institute

WP:NPROF:4

==========

Elkins co-created the world's first human-centered AI Digital Humanities curriculum with over 55,000 downloads worldwide from 160 countries/territories and +1,000 institutions

WP:NPROF:5

==========

Elkins is a full-professor and has been Director of the Integrated Program in Humane Studies (per (3) below)

National Endowment of Humanities (NEH) Distinguished Professor (2018-2021)

(new) https://www.kenyon.edu/offices-and-services/office-of-the-provost/recognition/neh-professorship/

WP:NPROF:6

==========

Selected to represent the 25,000+ scholars worldwide for the Modern Lanaguage Association (per 1.b above)

WP:NPROF:7

==========

Panelist with leading thought leaders, authors, and public intellectuals with the Helix Center in NYC and Al Jazeera

Audible.com Lectures on Tape on the Modern Novel and Giants of French Literature for wide audience

Industry AI Strategies Expert for Bloomberg Executive Education

WP:NPROF:8

==========

Editor for Oxford University Press Series on Philosophy and Literature (2022)

(3) Professorship

==================================================

Yes, Elkins was promoted to full professor in 2022 as Director of the Integrated Program in Humane Studies (as noted in this announcement by the Board of Trustees) (see (2)WP:NPROF:5 above)

• https://www.kenyon.edu/news/archive/full-professors-2/

Regards,

Jon J2000ai (talk) 21:24, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi @J2000ai,

Apologies for such a belated reply.

Thank you for your helpful response.

I'm almost persuaded, but I don't think I'm seeing enough WP:RS. There are many references by Elkins (or from Kenyon College) but I'm not seeing many about her from independent sources. As previously requested, could you please provide the WP:THREE best sources that establish notability? Cabrils (talk) 01:48, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply!

We just got back from a family vacation and found your update. Apologies since I'm brand new at this, but I patterned Elkins' article based upon other academics - one of which would be Emily M. Bender who also works in AI from a foundation in linguistics instead of Literature/Philosophy like Elkins. I've tried to follow a parallel structure although Bender is more well known at this point.

Although many of the citations are from writings of Elkins, the gold standard for reliable sources in academia are peer-reviewed top journals and academic presses. For example, Oxford and Cambridge University Presses, where her last two books are with, are considered two of the most selective academic presses worldwide. Similarly, her recent paper on Open Source AI regulation was presented this summer in Vienna at ICLM, the 2nd most prestigeous AI conference after NeurIPS (and was one of the 5% of all ICML papers selected for an oral presentation).

While top conference peer-reviewed papers are the most important factor for prestige, academic promotion and even hiring at top AI firms like Google, OpenAI, etc. Elkins' work in her Humanities have been presented in the top peer-reviewed journals including Narrative, Cultural Analytics, Modern Language Quarterly, and Poetics Today. Unlike CS/AI, journal articles and books are much more important than conferences papers/presentations for promotion and tenure. Oddly, some academic fields like Philosophy heavily emphasize papers over book.

I added several citations that are new or I overlooked in top or well-regarded journals as well as conferences with top academics

• Poetics Today June 2024 https://read.dukeupress.edu/poetics-today/article/45/2/267/387698/AI-Comes-for-the-Author
• Frontiers in Computer Science 12 August 2024 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/computer-science/articles/10.3389/fcomp.2024.1444021/full
• Washington University St. Louis April 2024 https://transdisciplinaryfutures.wustl.edu/events/stories-win-symposium#:~:text=Stories%20that%20Win%20is%20a,from%20small%20towns%20to%20nations. schedule with Elkins presenting https://wustl.app.box.com/s/bcn6cs5vhia141fsg8mi3emmi22iar9a (Hosted at Washington University in St. Louis, the Stories that Win Symposium will welcome distinguished scholars and storytellers from across the nation.)
• Springer International Journal of Digital Humanities 4 December 2023 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42803-023-00078-7 The authors of this Springer article make several references to specific contributions to eXplainable AI by Elkins

Beyond unusually broad transdisciplinary peer-reviewed publications in top journals/conferences, I would guess Elkins' most reliable non-academic secondary sources would include

• US AI Safety Institute co-principal investigator for the Modern Language Association, the oldest academic society focused on language representing 25,000 literature, linguistic, and translation scholars worldwide
• IBM-Notre Dame Tech Ethics Grant Winner (1 of only 3 awarded in the US)
• Bloomberg Executive AI Strategy Course https://bloomberg.emeritus.org/ai-strategy
• Al-Jazeera roundtable with Boris Eldagsen (winner of Sony World Photography Award 2023)
• Several Helix Roundtables with top intellectuals, academics, writers, and experts including Rosalind Picard (head of MIT CSAIL), Francesca Rossi (European IBM Fellow and President of Assoc for Advancement of AI), and others

Generally, academics are somewhat segregated from mainstream media and live within their own bubble world of publish and perish and often in deep but narrow silos of expertise. Given the rise of AI, growing importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, and the relative paucity of authoratative voices from women I hope Elkins has enough authoratative secondary sources both within and outside of this garden-walled world of academia.

Best, Jon J2000ai (talk) 22:18, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

I just added Elkins' keynote address here at Lafayette College for their "Symposium: AI Literacy Across the Curriculum" with reference to event's web page at the college's website.

I double checked various wikipedia articles for academics I used as initial templates for Elkins' article. Most only have secondary authoratitive sources within the academic world proper (e.g. peer review of their own written articles, books and/or theories). Here is Ned Block's wikipedia article (a very prominent Philosopher at NYU who was a co-panelist with Elkins last year at the Helix Center): Ned Block. Also, here are a list of Kenyon College faculty members with wikipedia articles, where very few have any authoratative citations or sources outside of the academic world: Category:Kenyon College faculty

It is extremely rare, even for notable academics, to have citations in both academia and traditional sources like the main stream media. Both roles are more than full-time occupations. There are a handful of public intellectuals that are active in both academia and the MSM like Yan LeCun and David Chalmers (a Helix panelist last year). Many who become MSM personalities like Neil de Grass Tyson or Yuval Harari either leave academia and/or reduce traditional academic research/publishing to a trickle. It is even more rare to find women in science and AI research which I hope also makes an article for Elkins noteworthy.

Regards, Jon J2000ai (talk) 22:16, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Just updated the article with a new link and overlooked authoratative citations to secondary sources including:

• Elkin's membership in Meta's Open Innovation AI Research Community and announced upcoming talk at their October conference at London Meta HQ https://openinnovationairesearchcommun.splashthat.com/ and https://llama.meta.com/open-innovation-ai-research-community/
• Tech Ethics Lab at ND: https://techethicslab.nd.edu/

- J J2000ai (talk) 17:35, 26 August 2024 (UTC)