ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA – Princeton University Political Science Professor Arthur Spirling will share his insights on how artificial intelligence is transforming society and politics during an April 2 event at Winthrop University.
Spirling’s talk will serve as this year’s Hornsby Lecture and as the keynote address during the Winthrop Model United Nations program.
The title for the 6 p.m. lecture in Tillman Auditorium is “The Fall of the Machines: Beyond the Hype: Real-World Prospects and Public Skepticism of AI.”
A reception for Spirling, whose expertise spans the twin fields of data science and political science, will be held earlier in the day on April 2 at 4:30 p.m. in Richardson Ballroom B. He’ll also speak to graduate students in the Master of Liberal Arts program in The Intuitive Eye course taught by Art Professor Alice Burmeister.
Philosophy Professor M. Gregory Oakes, who coordinates the Hornsby Lecture and is associate dean for the College of Arts and Sciences, said Spirling’s research is being conducted in a time of great concern about the emergence of artificial intelligence. There is a public perception that it will be used to negatively affect politics, to commit fraud through increasingly sophisticated scams, to gain unauthorized use of data, and to cause job losses, among other fears.
William P. Kiblinger, director of the Master of Liberal Arts program, said he is delighted that Winthrop will host such an outstanding scholar who can provide timely analysis and guidance regarding the emergence of AI networks. “The promise and the perils of this new technology require thoughtful consideration, and this lecture will be a good place to start,” he added.
At Princeton, Spirling is the Class of 1987 Professor of Politics and the director of Graduate Studies. He received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. Previously, he served on the faculties of Harvard University and New York University.
His research centers on quantitative methods for analyzing political behavior, especially institutional development, and the use of text-as-data. His work on these subjects has appeared in outlets such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of the American Statistical Association. Currently he is active on problems at the intersection of data science and social science, including those related to machine learning and large language models.
Spirling previously won teaching and mentoring awards at Harvard and NYU, along with the Emerging Scholar prize from the Society for Political Methodology.
About the Hornsby Lecture
The Hornsby MLA Lecture Series was created in 1999 by an endowment from Clarence and Lynn Hornsby ’70. The purpose of the fund is to provide a Master of Liberal Arts lectureship series at Winthrop.
Previous lectures have included: Heather Lanier, “Raising a Rare Girl,” 2021; Carol Tavris, “Self-Justification in Everyday Life: What Cognitive Dissonance Theory Teaches Us About Cheating, Conflict, Love, War, Memory--and the Rest of Life,” 2014; Michael Berube, “‘Pulp Fiction,’ Contemporary Philosophy, and the Fine Art of Agreeing to Disagree,” 2011; and Leonard Schlain, “Art and Physics” and “The Alphabet vs. the Goddess,” 2006.
About the Winthrop Model United Nations
The Winthrop Model UN XLIX session is co-sponsoring the Spirling lecture. This year’s sessions on April 2-4 are expected to attract students from more than 20 high schools in the Carolinas. The focus will be on “Parting Ways With Neo-Colonialism: Ensuring Global Achievement through Development for All.” Winthrop's program was the first of its kind to combine participation of college students with high school students. The Winthrop students, who enroll in the United Nations course, are each assigned a country and work with the high school team representing that country. Political Science Professor Jennifer Leigh Disney is the faculty advisor of the Model UN.
For more information about the Spirling lecture, contact Greg Oakes at oakesm@winthrop.edu or Katie Hartnett at hartnettk@winthrop.edu.
