Date/Time
Date(s) - 22/11/2024
13:00 - 17:00
Categories
Facilitator : Silva Ferretti, Freelance Consultant
The workshop will acknowledge the many types of AI but focus on generative, conversational models (like ChatGPT, Claude, and others), exploring their role as “working companions” in evaluation. By highlighting creative applications, we aim to show how AI can innovate and enhance evaluation rather than constrain it.
Participants will explore diverse use cases and have space for collaborative exploration and discussion. These examples will reveal and connect to core concepts that deepen our understanding of AI’s potential as a companion:
- AI, Not Software: AI “thinks” differently. While we tend to interpret AI as advanced software, it functions on a fundamentally different level.
- Personality Matters: Recognizing AI’s “personality” helps us leverage its strengths and anticipate limitations, without falling into the trap of anthropomorphizing it.
- Conversations, Not Prompts; Processes, Not Tasks: Effective interaction with and use of AI comes from engaging it as a conversational partner rather than focusing solely on “prompt engineering.” We’ll explore where AI best fits within workflows to enrich analysis and engagement.
- Supervision Loops: Who’s in Control? We can’t take AI’s outputs at face value. Effective use requires active oversight, including implementing different “loops” of supervision.
Silva Ferretti is an independent consultant specializing in participatory evaluation, transformative learning, and ethical AI applications within humanitarian and development sectors. Her recent engagements include supporting Médecins Sans Frontières in a harm-reduction evaluation in Kenya, facilitating a resilience forum for grassroots and local organizations in East Africa, working with UNICEF in South Sudan on participatory monitoring for child protection, and assessing AWID’s global feminist forum—demonstrating her adaptability across varied contexts and organizations.
Silva’s approach is inherently creative, incorporating for example real-time blogging, multimedia storytelling, video, and cartooning to make evaluation engaging and accessible. Her exploration of AI is a natural extension of her efforts to make evaluation relevant, inclusive, and complex-aware, with a strong focus on participatory engagement—and always pushing creative boundaries with this new tool she enjoys “hacking.” Her work with AI has sparked interest across diverse forums, including European and other Evaluation Societies, master’s programs, practitioner summer schools, and policy discussions for public administrators.
Experimenting with AI is part of her creative push to make evaluation a transformative rather than controlling tool. She leverages AI to enhance inclusivity and simplify complexity, while remaining acutely aware of power dynamics within projects, evaluations, and AI applications.
Fees :
€180 EES Member
€230 Non-Member
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Participants experiencing financial hardship – please contact us for special rates. We wish to be as inclusive as possible.