RONO HILLS, 13 Sep: The Centre for Development Studies (CDS) of Rajiv Gandhi University's (RGU) economics department organised a workshop on 'Artificial Intelligence in Social Science Research' here recently.

Addressing the participants, RGU Vice-Chancellor (i/c) Prof SK Nayak appreciated the CDS for organising the workshop on the use of AI. He 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 on a larger scale.

Social Sciences Dean Prof Nani Bath said 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 informed the gathering about the huge extent of investments being made on AI by multinational companies. Expressing 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 globalisation.

Prof Vandana Upadhyay and Economics HoD Prof Lijum Nochi also spoke.

The resource persons of the workshop were RGU CSE Department Assistant Professor Dr Rupam Kr Sharma and Dr Mofidul Hassan from Gauhati University.

The workshop was attended by research scholars and delegates from different departments of RGU's social sciences faculty.

A special lecture was also organised by the CDS on 11 September on the topic 'Measuring economic inequality: Methodological issues and alternative approaches'. The lecture was delivered by Dr Mofidul Hassan, who dwelt on different concepts of welfare and different types of economic inequality. He also presented the various methods that can be used for measuring economic inequality, and the merits and limitations of each method.

He advised the scholars not to draw conclusions based on the result of just one method, and asked the scholars 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 RGU Economics Department Associate Professor Dr Ashi Lama, who summarised the lecture and encouraged the participants to raise questions.

The lecture was coordinated by Economics Associate Professor Dr Prasenjit B Baruah, and was attended by faculty members, research scholars and PG students.