The Schwartz Reisman Institute’s annual academic conference Absolutely Interdisciplinary will explore interdisciplinary approaches to AI governance, risk and safety on May 29, 2025, in person at U of T’s Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus.
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.
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are evolving at an extraordinary pace, holding the potential to transform societies, economies, and systems in profound ways. Yet, as the possibilities expand, so do the challenges—and many of these cannot be solved by technical innovation alone. The fifth annual Absolutely Interdisciplinary conference will unite researchers, students, and professionals across disciplines to explore ideas, spark new insights, and shape research agendas.
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.
Venue
Multipurpose Room (W280), Second Floor
Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus, University of Toronto
108 College Street, Toronto, ON M5G 1L7
Schedule
May 29, 2025 | 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM
8:30 AM – 9:00 AM | Registration and breakfast
9:00 AM – 9:30 AM | Opening remarks and director’s address
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM | New frontiers in AI governance
Speakers: Atoosa Kasirzadeh, Nitarshan Rajkumar, Karina Vold (moderator)
Governing the most advanced ‘frontier’ AI systems presents distinct challenges that go beyond general AI governance. This session will explore key governance considerations for highly capable AI systems, offering insights into the sociotechnical complexities of AI risk governance and emerging approaches to regulation. Kasirzadeh and Rajkumar will examine the political, social, and technical dimensions of frontier AI governance and discuss trade-offs in different strategies that balance innovation and risk mitigation.
11:00 AM – 11:20 AM | Break
11:20 AM – 12:30 PM | Morning keynote - The slow death of scaling: what it means for policy controlling compute
Speakers: Sara Hooker (virtual), Roger Grosse (moderator)
In this talk, we will understand how the relationship between compute and performance is changing. To do so, we need to engage with a decades-old debate at the heart of computer science progress, namely, is bigger always better? Does a certain inflection point of compute result in changes to the risk profile of a model? This discussion is timely given the wide adoption of compute thresholds and chip bans to identify more risky systems and prevent misuse. A key conclusion of this essay is that the relationship between compute and risk is highly uncertain and rapidly changing. Relying upon access to compute alone overestimates our ability to predict model risk, and is likely to have limited success as a policy measure. This talk also prompts a wider reflection on how do we make sure policies are guided by scientific evidence.
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM | Lunch
1:30 PM – 3:00 PM | Navigating autonomy and accountability in AI agents
Speakers: Megan Ma (virtual), Atrisha Sarkar, Anna Su (moderator)
Autonomous agents are shaping the future of AI development, raising legal and societal questions about accountability, governance, and trust. Who is responsible when an AI agent makes a harmful decision? How should laws evolve to regulate AI autonomy? This session will bring together experts in law, ethics, technology, and policy to explore the challenges of governing AI agents, from liability and bias to power dynamics and regulatory gaps. Using real-world scenarios and examples, Ma and Sarkar will examine how to balance innovation with accountability in an era of increasingly independent AI systems.
3:00 PM – 3:20 PM | Break
3:20 PM – 4:30 PM | Afternoon keynote - Gradual disempowerment: Systemic existential risks from incremental AI development
Speakers: David Duvenaud, Sheila McIlraith (moderator)
This talk will explore the systemic risks posed by incremental advancements in artificial intelligence, introducing the concept of gradual disempowerment as an alternative to the abrupt takeover scenarios often discussed in AI safety. Drawing on recent research, Duvenaud will examine how even incremental improvements in AI capabilities can erode human influence over critical societal systems, including the economy, culture, and governance.
As AI increasingly supplants human labor and cognition, it may weaken both explicit control mechanisms—such as voting and market choices—and the implicit human alignments embedded in societal structures that historically relied on human participation. Furthermore, if these systems incentivize outcomes misaligned with human values, AI-driven optimization could exacerbate those misalignments. These effects may reinforce one another across domains, as economic power influences cultural narratives and political decision-making, while cultural shifts, in turn, shape economic and political behavior.
This session will explore whether such dynamics could lead to an effectively irreversible decline in human agency over key societal functions, heightening the risk of existential catastrophe through long-term disempowerment. The discussion will highlight the need for both technical research and governance strategies to counteract the incremental erosion of human influence and ensure that AI-driven systems remain aligned with human interests.
4:30 PM – 4:40 PM | Closing remarks
4:40 PM – 5:30 PM | Reception
Speakers
David Duvenaud, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Canada CIFAR AI Chair & Founding Member, Vector Institute; Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society.
Roger Grosse, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Canada CIFAR AI Chair & Founding Member, Vector Institute; Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society.
Sara Hooker, Head of Cohere For AI and VP Research, Cohere.
David Lie, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto; Canada Research Chair in Secure and Reliable Systems; Director, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.
Atoosa Kasirzadeh, Assistant Professor, AI Governance, Ethics, and Safety, Carnegie Mellon University.
Megan Ma, Executive Director, Stanford Legal Innovation through Frontier Technology Lab.
Sheila McIlraith, Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto; Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Vector Institute; Associate Director, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.
Nitarshan Rajkumar, Vice-Chair, General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, European Commission; Visiting Fellow, Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative.
Atrisha Sarkar, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western University; Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.
Anna Su, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto; Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.
Karina Vold, Assistant Professor, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto; Research Lead, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.
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.