Since 2023, I have been part of an interdisciplinary working group exploring how to better integrate the humanities, social and economic sciences with the development of AI systems.
The first output of this working group is a perspective paper on the importance of integrating social science with AI development (Chades et al., 2025). We present four justifications for integrating the social sciences and humanities into AI development: enhancing the social legitimacy of AI projects, ensuring meaningful impact of AI projects, strengthening the credibility of AI projects, and capability building for social scientists, humanities scholars, and AI developers.
Our second output is a reflection by our group on how we designed and participated in an initial set of activities to foster collaboration and integration between researchers working in AI, the humanities, and social and economic sciences (Carter et al., 2025). We present some conclusions on what factors are important for forming an effective interdisciplinary AI research group.
Several other papers are currently in progress.
References
2025
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Four Compelling Reasons to Urgently Integrate AI Development With Humanities, Social and Economics Sciences
Iadine Chades, Melanie McGrath, Erin Bohensky, Lucy Carter, Rebecca Coates, Ben Harwood, Md Zahidul Islam, Sevvandi Kandanaarachchi, Cheng Soon Ong, Andrew Reeson, Samantha Stone-Jovicich, Cécile Paris, Mitchell Scovell, Kirsty Wissing, and David M. Douglas
IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, Feb 2025
As AI systems increasingly influence various aspects of human life, it is critical to ensure their development and deployment align with ethical standards and societal values. Our paper argues that integrating expertise from Humanities, Social, and Economic Sciences (HSES) into AI development is essential to achieving responsible AI. We present four compelling reasons to advocate for this integration: enhancing social legitimacy, ensuring meaningful impact, strengthening credibility and capability building. These reasons emerged from a collaborative effort involving 16 researchers from AI and HSES fields. Together, we explored the enablers and barriers to integrating our knowledge for the purpose of developing effective, responsible, and socially grounded AI products. We aim to inspire others to adopt an integrated approach to AI development, promoting innovations that are both technologically advanced and aligned with societal needs.
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Lessons from the Edges of Interdisciplinarity - Integrating Artificial Intelligence with the Humanities, Social and Economic Sciences
Lucy Carter, Samantha Stone-Jovicich, Erin Bohensky, Rebecca Coates, David Douglas, Jonathan Ferrer-Mestres, Ben Harwood, Md Zahidul Islam, Sevvandi Kandanaarachchi, Melanie McGrath, Cheng Soon Ong, Cécile Paris, Andrew Reeson, Mitchell Scovell, Kirsty Wissing, and Iadine Chades
Applied Artificial Intelligence, Feb 2025
