As technology continues to advance, disparities in access to data and information persist, creating a digital divide that hinders social progress and economic development. Ensuring that people from all walks of life are able to access and use data effectively is critical for empowering people to make better decisions and creating equitable outcomes for society. The recent emergence of generative AI models could have the potential to facilitate data comprehension, analysis, and decision-making for individuals who may lack technical expertise, but the practical application and characteristics of these tools are not widely documented or understood.
As part of the fourth year of our partnership with Microsoft, we are exploring the potential of conversational generative AI models to bridge the data divide, by helping non-technical users of data to discover datasets and unlock their value, through descriptive and exploratory data analysis techniques. This programme of work will feature:
- A landscape review of current AI tools which can support data publishing and use, the report will be published in February 2024.
- A data prompting workshop held in February to explore the potential of these tools to support non-technical users with data discovery and use.
- Further work to address the questions raised in our research on generative AI tools.
The data prompting workshop will provide up to 20-25 people with an opportunity to test conversational generative AI models and discover how these tools might be applied to their everyday work with data, as well as where existing tools are not currently suited to meeting their needs. The workshops will be divided into two sessions on the day:
- Session one: 2.5 hours on the topic of data discovery, to help participants use a variety of conversational generative AI tools to discover and access open datasets
- Session two: 3 hours on the topic of data analysis, to help participants use a variety of conversational generative AI tools to perform descriptive and exploratory data analysis on a predetermined dataset
If you are working with data in your role, even if you do not have a background in data analytics and/or data science, and are interested in discovering how conversational generative AI may help you in your professional capacity, we invite you to register your interest to join the workshop.
The outcomes of the workshop will be written up into a short report, and the insights from the session will form part of the research for the wider project.
Workshop details
Date: 29th February 2024, 10:00 - 16:30
Location: In-person, Foundling Museum
Cost: Free
Additional requirements
Participants will be required to fill in a pre-workshop survey about their current level of understanding about conversational generative AI & Large Language Models. After the workshops, participants will be required to fill in another survey about their experiences of using conversational generative AI tools to undertake data discovery and analysis, and whether they feel their ability to discover and analyse data has improved as a result. We will also ask participants to bring a laptop to use during the workshop, but this shouldn’t be a limiting factor, please let us know if you need support on that front.
How do I sign up?
To register your interest, please fill out from below by Wednesday the 21st of February and feel free to get in touch with [email protected] with any questions.
We will contact the successful applicants by email, no later than Thursday 22nd February, with more information about the workshop sessions. In the case we have too many applicants, participants will be selected from the answers to the form, to ensure we have a balanced group of participants.