AI has genuinely transformative potential, with high stakes, great possibilities and significant risks. It was a natural choice to be the first focus area for our Wisconsin RISE Initiative.
A focus on this area builds on our strong foundations in data science and computer science while integrating the social sciences, humanities and human ecology, with the goal of putting people at the center of these solutions.
—Jennifer L. Mnookin, Chancellor
Accelerating discovery across disciplines
UW–Madison faculty, staff, and students are using AI to unlock new capabilities in disparate arenas — in medicine and materials science, in agriculture and communications — to answer hard questions and discover new possibilities in their research. UW–Madison researchers have employed AI to improve the diagnosis of genetic disorders, help farmers detect disease in their crops before it spreads, and to predict new materials based on the properties that would be most useful.
AI technologies are enabling researchers to process and connect vast amounts of text, image, video, and other types of media. This is a transformative technology for areas like law, mass communication and medicine, providing powerful new ways to search and gain insight from oceans of data. In turn, the use of automated approaches like these will drive research into fundamentals of AI to address questions of accuracy, trustworthiness, and privacy.
Our AI researchers are looking at societal and policy implications of AI; ways AI can enhance agriculture and soil classification; mitigating cancer-related health disparities; optimizing cardiac imaging; advancing digitally driven manufacturing; focusing on the foundations of machine learning; and democratizing design processes, just to name a few. Through their collaborative efforts, these researchers will spur campus, industry and community engagement addressing both the promise and risks of artificial intelligence.
—John Zumbrunnen, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
RISE-AI Collaboration Headquarters
The RISE‑AI Collaboration HQ catalyzes connections across UW–Madison, bringing together faculty, staff, and students advancing scholarship in the field of artificial intelligence. Housed within the Data Science Institute, the RISE-AI HQ supports a coordinated portfolio of events, positions research teams for external funding opportunities, and contributes to shared research computing resources. These efforts encourage steady collaboration in teaching, outreach, and industry engagement, as well as industry partnerships.
Human-centered technology
Artificial intelligence offers tremendous possibilities for improving the human condition, but it also carries with it a concerning set of risks. To address these realities, RISE-AI is integrating researchers with expertise in fields such as law, economics, psychology, education, philosophy, journalism, and sociology. The new Center for Humanistic Inquiry into AI and Uncertainty, for example, serves as a collaborative hub for gathering people, ideas, and resources from across UW–Madison in order to engage in scholarly and public debates around the significant uncertainty emerging AI technologies generate.
UW–Madison researchers are also running studies to help guide decisions around new AI technologies. For instance, researchers in the Department of Medicine are evaluating whether “ambient AI” — AI-based scribes — can improve job satisfaction and reduce burnout for medical practitioners. Similarly, our Center for Teaching and Research in Writing is studying how tools like ChatGPT influence how students learn to write. Similar studies will inform the impact of AI on legal practice, software development, and areas where use of AI risks losing essential skills.
The future of AI is here, and with it comes an urgency to deploy human-centered design to understand how people adapt to and leverage these technologies. Human Ecology has been leading the human-centered design initiative, which will add value to the campus-wide RISE AI Initiative because addressing complex questions requires an ecological approach that puts people at the center.
—Soyeon Shim, Elizabeth Holloway Schar Dean of the School of Human Ecology
Investing in AI
Over the next three to five years, RISE will accelerate the growth of UW–Madison’s network of AI innovators, adding up to 50 new faculty positions at all levels across campus to complement regular hiring. Wisconsin RISE stands to more than double campus investment in AI and related fields than could otherwise have been achieved. New AI-focused faculty will join schools, colleges, centers, institutes and other units across campus.
We already know that AI is and will be accelerating discovery in fields such as physics and atmospheric science. Because AI is becoming so pervasive in all aspects of our lives, it is inseparable from the social sciences and humanities; it is critical that we engage these disciplines in this work, particularly in thinking about the safe and ethical use of AI.
Eric Wilcots, Dean of the College of Letters & Science
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- March 24
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- April 10
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