An annual academic conference hosted by the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, Absolutely Interdisciplinary convenes leading thinkers from a rich variety of fields to engage in conversations that encourage innovation and inspire new insights.
Connecting technical researchers, social scientists, and humanists, Absolutely Interdisciplinary fosters new ways of thinking about the challenges presented by AI and other powerful technologies to build a future that promotes human well-being—for everyone.
Conference participants will contribute to and learn about emerging areas of research and new questions to explore. Each session pairs researchers from different disciplines to address a common question, and then facilitate a group discussion. By identifying people working on similar questions from different perspectives, we will foster conversations that develop the interdisciplinary approaches and research questions needed to understand how AI can be made to align with human values.
Absolutely Interdisciplinary 2022 schedule:
June 20, 2022:
10:00 AM – 2:30 PM (ET): SRI Graduate Workshop: Technologies of Trust
June 21, 2022:
11:45 AM – 12:45 PM (ET): Redrawing data boundaries
12:45 PM – 2:00 PM: Explanation and justification in AI
2:15 PM – 3:30 PM: Natural and artificial social learning
June 22, 2022:
11:45 AM – 12:45 PM (ET): Digital constitutionalism and the futures of digital governance
12:45 PM – 2:00 PM: Collective reasoning and joint intentionality
2:15 PM – 3:30 PM: Building democratic social choice into recommender systems
Absolutely Interdisciplinary 2022 speakers:
Lisa Austin, Professor and Chair in Law and Technology, University of Toronto; Associate Director and Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute.
Boris Babic, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics and Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto; Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute..
Finale Doshi-Velez, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University.
Gillian Hadfield, Professor of Law and Strategic Management, University of Toronto; Director and Chair, Schwartz Reisman Institute; Faculty Affiliate, Vector Institute; Senior Policy Advisor, OpenAI.
Eric Horvitz, Chief Scientific Officer, Microsoft.
Aziz Z. Huq, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, University of Chicago.
Natasha Jaques, Senior Research Scientist, Google Brain.
Peter Loewen, Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto; Director, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy; Associate Director and Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute.
Sheila McIlraith, Professor of Computer Science, University of Toronto; Associate Director and Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute; CIFAR AI Chair; Faculty Member, Vector Institute.
Kate Larson, Professor of Computer Science, University of Waterloo; Research Scientist, DeepMind.
Jennifer Nagel, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto; Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute.
Taylor Owen, Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications and Associate Professor in the Max Bell School of Public Policy, McGill University; founding director of the Center for Media, Technology and Democracy.
Robert Seamans, Associate Professor, Stern School of Business, New York University.
Pamela Snively, Chief Data and Trust Officer, TELUS.
Jonathan Stray, Senior Scientist, Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI, University of California Berkeley.
Denis Walsh, Professor of Philosophy, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto; Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute.
Richard Watson, Associate Professor, Institute for Life Sciences/Department of Computer Science (Agents, Interaction and Complexity group), University of Southampton.
Wendy H. Wong, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto; Canada Research Chair in Global Governance and Civil Society; Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute.