Associate Professor of Architecture Ellie Abrons is part of a University of Michigan research team exploring the concept of “algorithmic reparation,” with the ultimate goal of formulating avenues for algorithmic and AI reform.

The interdisciplinary team was awarded a U-M Institute for Humanities Collaboratory Proposal Development Grant in spring 2024 for the reparative AI project. The concept of “algorithmic reparation” brings together theories of intersectionality with acts of repair, intending to recognize and rectify structural inequity. Collectively, the research team is focused on research questions encompassing the lifecycle of AI, from its historicization and conception to industry practices and regulation to everyday use.

Abrons, who also serves as director of the U-M Digital Studies Institute, is looking at how AI is affecting housing and considering how toolkits/visualizations can serve as communication tools to translate technical information to a broad audience (in the service of more equitable design and implementation of AI).

The grant allowed the team to travel to conferences and exhibitions where ethical AI was being discussed and debated to study perspectives and discourses on ethical AI among a variety of humanistic and computational fields and to identify leaders in the field and potential reparative

AI symposium participants and/or collaborators. The research team also revised a proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and wrote and submitted three other grant proposals — two internal and one external. The team also plans to submit grant proposals to two National Science Foundation (NSF) opportunities.

In addition to Abrons, the research team consists of Germaine Halegoua, lead PI and associate professor of communication and media; Matthew Bui, associate professor in the School of Information; Tung-Hui Hu, associate professor of English language and literature; and Apryl Williams, assistant professor of communication and media and digital studies.