RONO HILLS, Sep 13: Centre for Development Studies, Department of Economics, RGU organized a one-day workshop on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Social Science Research on Thursday last.
While speaking at the function, Prof S K Nayak Vice-Chancellor (i/c) appreciated the CDS for organising a workshop on use of AI. He, however, called on the scholars to use AI carefully such that its use does not hamper their thinking ability. He urged the CDS to organise such workshop in a larger scale.
Prof Nani Bath, Dean Faculty of Social Sciences stated that we are very late in adopting new technologies. When the world is talking about super artificial intelligence, we are talking about the use of artificial intelligence. He also informed the gathering about the huge extent of investment being made on AI by the multinational companies. He expressed apprehension that AI may be used in a wrong way by scholars to save time and energy. He advised the scholars to use AI for generation of new ideas and not just for minimising their efforts and creativity. Prof Bath also questioned the relevance of ILP in the era of artificial intelligence and globalization.
A special lecture was organised by the CDS on Friday on the topic ‘Measuring economic inequality: methodological issues and alternative approaches’ The lecture was delivered by Dr Mofidul Hassan, Gauhati University.
In his lecture, Dr Hassan mentioned about different concept of welfare and different types of economic inequality; good and bad. He also presented the various methods that can be used for measuring economic inequality and merits and limitations of each method. He suggested scholars not to draw conclusion based on the result of just one method, and asked them to supplement the result of one method with the result of other methods. He stated that Gini ratio is the most widely used method for measuring overall inequality, but it needs to be complemented by Lorenz curve and Palma ratio.
The session was chaired by Dr Ashi Lama, Associate Professor, Dept of Economics, RGU.