Absolutely Interdisciplinary 2026 explores AI’s social, cognitive, and political dimensions
SRI’s Absolutely Interdisciplinary conference explored how increasingly capable AI systems are reshaping public discourse, institutional trust, and the boundaries between technical systems and social life.
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become increasingly embedded in social life, what happens when they begin to function not only as tools, but as social actors, cognitive systems, and institutional infrastructure?
That question animated the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society’s (SRI) annual academic conference, Absolutely Interdisciplinary. Hosted in person at the University of Toronto’s Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus on May 13, 2026, the event brought together researchers and technologists from across disciplines to examine how increasingly capable AI systems are reshaping human relationships, public discourse, governance, and trust.
Now in its sixth year, Absolutely Interdisciplinary has become a flagship forum for cross-disciplinary dialogue on the societal implications of AI. This year’s conference explored themes ranging from empathy and persuasion to cognitive evaluation, misinformation, and institutional legitimacy, emphasizing the need for approaches to AI that extend beyond technical performance alone.
In her opening remarks, SRI Associate Director Sheila McIlraith reflected on how dramatically the AI landscape has shifted since the conference first launched during the pandemic.
“We’ve seen the world awaken to AI,” she said, pointing to rapid advances in model capabilities alongside growing concerns around employment, misinformation, mental health, and environmental impact. “Absolutely Interdisciplinary has prided itself on showcasing cutting-edge, evidence-based discussion at the intersection of technology, society, and policy.”
Participants from across disciplines gathered to examine how increasingly capable AI systems are reshaping human relationships, public discourse, governance, and trust.
AI as social actor
The conference opened with a keynote by Kashmir Hill, investigative reporter at The New York Times and author of Your Face Belongs to Us (2024). Drawing on her reporting at the intersection of AI, privacy, and everyday life, Hill explored how AI systems increasingly mediate intimacy, belief, and trust. She related stories of numerous “seemingly normal” people who were instructed by ChatGPT to contact her about “conspiracies and world-ending insights”—incidents that led her to investigate users having lengthy conversations that did not comply with OpenAI’s safety guidelines.
Hill’s keynote set the stage for the conference’s second session, “AI as social agent: Intimacy, empathy, and persuasion,” moderated by SRI Research Lead Michael Inzlicht. The session examined how people form emotional attachments to AI systems and what distinguishes AI empathy from human connection, with presentations by Inzlicht and psychologist Anat Perry.
“AI is already a social agent,” said Inzlicht in his opening remarks. “Hundreds of millions of people are talking to these systems every day, and a meaningful fraction are talking to them about things they used to bring to friends, partners, therapists, and clergy.”
The session explored how AI systems can simulate empathy persuasively, shape belief, and provide emotional support—raising broader questions about authenticity, vulnerability, and the future of human relationships.
Panelists Anat Perry, Kashmir Hill, and Michael Inzlicht discussed the complexities of AI systems that offer empathetic support to humans in need.
Benchmarking minds
Questions about cognition and intelligence took center stage in the afternoon session “Benchmarking minds: How to evaluate cognitive capacities in general-purpose AI?,” moderated by philosopher and SRI Research Lead Karina Vold.
The panel featured AI researcher José Hernández-Orallo and philosopher Raphaël Millière, who examined whether concepts from psychometrics, comparative psychology, and cognitive science can meaningfully apply to advanced AI systems.
As large language models demonstrate increasingly broad competencies, the session explored the conceptual difficulty of assessing capacities like reasoning, understanding, or even the possibility of something resembling an “inner life.” The discussion highlighted how debates around cognition are inseparable from concerns about safety, alignment, and public trust.
Philosopher Raphaël Millière explored how to assess the cognitive capacities of advanced AI.
Negotiating the “trust gap”
The conference’s fourth session, “Negotiating the agentic turn: The sociotechnical architecture of AI trust,” shifted focus from cognition to governance. Moderated by SRI Research Lead Beth Coleman, the panel brought together Tobias Blanke and Malcolm Langford to examine how trust in AI systems is shaped not only by technical reliability, but by institutions, law, infrastructure, and democratic legitimacy.
“Trust is not simply a technical problem,” Coleman noted in her introduction. “It is shaped by social values, institutions, governance, and lived experience.”
The session built on the work of SRI’s AI & Trust Working Group, an interdisciplinary initiative convened by Coleman that brought together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners from across disciplines and sectors. The same day as the conference, Coleman released a new working paper, Trust in human–artificial intelligence interactions, which examines how trust in AI is understood across disciplines, identifying six shaping principles that reveal trust as an ongoing relational process linking system performance to social legitimacy.
Together, the panel and publication reflected a growing recognition that technical safeguards alone are insufficient to address the societal implications of AI deployment at scale.
Tobias Blanke, Beth Coleman, and Malcolm Langford (on screen) examined how trust in AI systems is built and sustained.
Misinformation and public discourse
The conference concluded with a session on generative AI, misinformation, and democratic discourse moderated by SRI Director David Lie, with misinformation researcher Jevin D. West and historian L.K. Bertram.
The discussion examined how AI-generated content is altering the epistemic environment in which public debate occurs—blurring distinctions between authentic and synthetic communication while accelerating the production and circulation of persuasive narratives.
“AI has gone from a system that helps with answering questions and retrieving information to one that is starting to help us ideate, generate narratives and shape criticisms,” Lie observed in his opening remarks. “Things that previously might have been thought of as the exclusive purview of human-human communication.”
West drew on his work at the Center for an Informed Public and his book Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World (2020) to explore how generative AI complicates critical reasoning and verification online, while Bertram discussed the challenges of communicating reliable historical knowledge within algorithmically driven media ecosystems.
SRI Director David Lie moderated a conversation on generative AI, misinformation, and democratic discourse with SRI Faculty Affiliate L.K. Bertram and Jevin D. West.
Looking ahead
Across discussions of empathy, cognition, trust, and misinformation, a common theme emerged: the challenges posed by AI are no longer confined to computer science alone.
In his closing remarks, Lie reflected on the conference’s broader significance.
“One of the goals of this conference, Absolutely Interdisciplinary, is to create space for conversations that do not fit neatly within a single discipline,” he said. “These questions demand collaboration across computer science, the social sciences, the humanities, journalism, law, and public policy.”
As participants gathered for a closing reception at the end of the day, the conference reinforced SRI’s role as a convening space for interdisciplinary dialogue on the societal implications of advanced technologies.
Rather than offering easy answers, Absolutely Interdisciplinary 2026 emphasized the importance of building shared frameworks for understanding systems that are increasingly shaping how people relate, reason, govern, and communicate.
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