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 artificial intelligence and other powerful data-driven technologies to build a future that promotes human well-being—for everyone.
Conference participants will contribute to and learn about emerging research areas and new questions to explore. Each session pairs researchers from different disciplines to address a common question and 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 2024:
Graduate Workshop: May 6, 2024 (online)
Main Conference: May 7–8, 2024 (in person only)
The Ian P. Sharp Lecture with invited speaker Beth Simone Noveck: May 8, 2024, 5:00 PM – 7:30 PM (in person only): “From ballots to bots: AI’s transformative role in democratic societies”
Venue
Multipurpose Room (W280), Second Floor
Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus, University of Toronto
108 College Street, Toronto, ON M5G 1L7
Schedule
May 6, 2024 | 2024 SRI Graduate Workshop: “Interdisciplinary Dialogues on AI”
Online event; in-person at Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus by invitation only.
May 7, 2024 | Absolutely Interdisciplinary Day 1
In-person at Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus
9:00 AM – 9:45 AM | Registration and breakfast
9:45 AM – 10:00 AM | Opening remarks
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM | A world of natural and artificial agents in a shared environment
Speakers: Gillian Hadfield, Peter Railton
As AI development pushes towards building autonomous AI agents, we can imagine a future, perhaps not too far off, during which humans and AI agents are interacting regularly in open domains. Clearly, such agents need to be able to cooperate with humans, just as humans have evolved to be highly cooperative with one another. In this session, Peter Railton and Gillian Hadfield will discuss what it might mean to develop AI agents that possess moral or normative competence, and whether there is any difference between those two ideas about competence.
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM | Lunch
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM | Algorithms to support AI safety cases
Speakers: Ashton Anderson (moderator), Roger Grosse
With the rapid advancement of large language model capabilities, it becomes increasingly essential to demonstrate that a given AI system doesn’t pose a catastrophic risk. In this session, Roger Grosse will outline how AI risks can be categorized into “AI Safety Levels” and the logic of how one might build a safety case at a given level. This motivates the need for algorithmic advances that will help build safety cases (or determine if a model is unsafe). Grosse will overview some recent work on training data attribution (TDA), where one tries to determine which training examples are responsible for a model’s outputs. Better TDA methods should help build safety cases by measuring the consequences of each stage of training for the model’s behavioral proclivities.
2:00 PM – 2:30 PM | Break
2:30 PM – 4:30 PM | Designing human-machine coexistence
Speakers: Huili Chen, I. Glenn Cohen, Anna Su (moderator)
Technological advances in artificial intelligence will not only potentially revolutionize human abilities but also facilitate the development of artificial entities capable of interacting with humans in both physical and virtual environments. How should we design and facilitate social and technical systems in an age of human and machine coexistence and still preserve the distinctiveness of humanity? In this session, I. Glenn Cohen examines developments in the field of medical AI and the law while Huili Chen considers the architectures and design choices that shape how humans interact with machines and robots.
4:30 PM – 5:00 PM | Closing remarks
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM | Reception
May 8, 2024 | Absolutely Interdisciplinary Day 2
In-person at Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus
9:00 AM – 9:45 AM | Registration and breakfast
9:45 AM – 10:00 AM | Opening remarks
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM | Navigating the AI landscape: Insights from the AI Index Report and Global Public Opinion on AI Report
Speakers: Peter Loewen, Kelly Lyons (moderator), Ray Perrault
What will a future landscape shaped by AI and data look like? What challenges do we face today amidst the implementation of AI systems across society? This session will explore key insights from Stanford HAI’s latest AI Index Report and the Schwartz Reisman Institute’s forthcoming Global Public Opinion on AI Report, exploring the goals, methodologies, and applications of these reports, as well as key takeaways for researchers and policymakers. What findings have the greatest potential to help us build a beneficial future? Speakers will discuss globally emerging trends and strategies for navigating evolving challenges in analyzing the role of AI systems, their social impacts, and their public perception.
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM | Lunch
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM | AI and the future of democracy
Speakers: Beth Coleman (moderator), Harper Reed
As the world approaches the biggest election year in recent history, the role of new technologies in shaping governance and politics is both omnipresent and ominous. This panel delves into urgent issues surrounding the potential sway of voters through AI and the looming threats of AI-generated videos, “rumour bombs,” and disinformation campaigns that have been enabled by the rise of powerful new AI tools. How can we protect established democratic and participatory systems from the misuse of generative AI? Key levers may include new technical solutions for improved facilitation and sensemaking of public engagement and democratic process. More controversially, other thinkers have proposed that “responsible” AI in this domain must move from consumer application to part of societal constitution and infrastructure. By unpacking the challenges and proposing solutions, the panel will contribute to ongoing discourse on shaping a future where technology supports, rather than undermines, democratic principles.
2:00 PM – 2:30 PM | Break
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM | AI adoption in industry
Speakers: Avi Goldfarb (moderator), Kristina McElheran, Christy Prada
While recent headlines have breathlessly proclaimed that AI technologies are taking over the world of work, the realities of AI adoption in practice are much more nuanced and varied. As history demonstrates, the transformative effects and implications of new technologies often take considerable time—sometimes a generation or more—to be implemented at a system level. However, when these transformations take hold, the results can alter not only the structure of industries and economies but the surrounding culture as well. This session will explore what challenges exist in getting industries to adopt new technologies, and how those challenges can be overcome, emphasizing the need for collaborative research across disciplines and the development of new paradigms and workflows to unlock the potential of AI innovation.
4:00 PM – 4:30 PM | Closing remarks
4:30 PM – 5:00 PM | Break
5:00 PM – 8:30 PM | Ian P. Sharp Lecture: Beth Simone Noveck, “From ballots to bots: AI’s transformative role in democratic societies”
Note: This event requires separate registration.
Speakers
Ashton Anderson, Department of Computer Science, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (University of Toronto)
Huili Chen, Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society (Harvard University)
I. Glenn Cohen, Harvard Law School, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics (Harvard University)
Roger Grosse, Department of Computer Science, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (University of Toronto)
Gillian Hadfield, Faculty of Law, Rotman School of Management, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (University of Toronto)
Peter Loewen, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, Department of Political Science, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (University of Toronto)
Kristina McElheran, Rotman School of Management, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (University of Toronto)
Ray Perrault, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI)
Christy Prada, Future Fertility
Peter Railton, Department of Philosophy (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
Harper Reed, harperreed.com
About the Schwartz Reisman Institute
Located at the University of Toronto, the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society’s mission is to deepen our knowledge of technologies, societies, and what it means to be human by integrating research across traditional boundaries and building human-centred solutions that really make a difference. The integrative research we conduct rethinks technology’s role in society, the contemporary needs of human communities, and the systems that govern them. We’re investigating how best to align technology with human values and deploy it accordingly. The human-centred solutions we build are actionable and practical, highlighting the potential of emerging technologies to serve the public good while protecting citizens and societies from their misuse. We want to make sure powerful technologies truly make the world a better place—for everyone.