Absolutely Interdisciplinary conference sets out to explore new connections in human and machine normativity
The Schwartz Reisman Institute announces its inaugural academic conference, Absolutely Interdisciplinary, to be held virtually from November 4-6, 2021 This year’s theme is Human and Machine Normativity: New Connections.
What is Absolutely Interdisciplinary?
AI and other powerful new technologies are advancing very quickly across all sectors and industries around the world. It’s imperative that we understand the capacities and limitations of these new systems—and not only from a technical perspective.
“Often, technologists and those working in other disciplines are approaching related problems from different angles,” says Schwartz Reisman Director Gillian Hadfield, a scholar of law and economics whose current research focuses on AI regulation, human normativity, and the alignment problem.
“These problems include concepts like cooperation, behaviour, values, and fairness—as well as essential work on social and legal systems, governance, and the all-important concepts of justification and explainability when advanced technologies are deployed in very consequential processes like decision-making,” says Hadfield.
The Schwartz Reisman Institute’s first international conference, Absolutely Interdisciplinary, will bring researchers from across academic disciplines together to build new approaches to and understandings of how we might meet the challenge of ensuring AI and other complex global technologies promote human well-being. The conference will be held virtually from November 4-6, 2021, with a one-day graduate workshop preceding the main event, four scheduled sessions across two days in the main conference, and opportunities for interaction and socialization in between.
Human and Machine Normativity: New Connections
Humans are a fundamentally normative species. This year’s Absolutely Interdisciplinary takes up as its mission the forging of new connections between researchers studying normativity in human and machine contexts.
It’s understood that humanity’s complex cognitive and social systems shape our behaviour and construct collectively-determined values and norms with the aim of supporting cooperation and human ends.
“Norms in this sense refer not to what most people actually do, but rather to what people should do,” says Schwartz Reisman Postdoctoral Fellow Benjamin Wald, one of the conference organizers and a specialist in moral theory and philosophy of action with applications in AI ethics.
“Normativity has varying definitions and usages across academic disciplines,” says Wald, “but for the purposes of our conference, we use ‘norms’ to refer to the ubiquitous formal and informal rules that prescribe behaviour. This could be anything from the very important, such as avoiding injury or harm to others, to the seemingly arbitrary, such as what is appropriate clothing to wear to a funeral.”
Cutting-edge research in the humanities and social sciences has been shedding light on the complexity of our shared systems of values and norms and how they evolve, are maintained, and shape our behaviour. And we know that building AI systems to be well-aligned with human values requires deep understandings of how our normative systems work. Simultaneously, advances in AI itself offer us unique opportunities to research and test what capacities contribute to our human ability to build, maintain, and abide by norms.
Absolutely Interdisciplinary will tackle these questions from a spectrum of disciplinary perspectives—from computer science and engineering to philosophy, economics, law, psychology, evolutionary biology, and beyond.
Absolutely Interdisciplinary 2021 guest speakers (clockwise from top left): Jeff Clune, Vincent Conitzer, Deborah M. Gordon, Moritz Hardt, Johanna Thoma, Deirdre K. Mulligan, Sarah Mathew, Joel Z. Leibo. Learn more about the speakers here.
Structure and sessions
Each of Absolutely Interdisciplinary’s four sessions will pair researchers from different disciplines to address a common question. The session topics include: social organisms and social AI, cooperative intelligence, computational ethics, and fairness in machine learning. Schwartz Reisman Research Leads will moderate sessions aligned with their areas of expertise, and will facilitate a group discussion afterwards.
The conference speakers are:
Jeff Clune, research team leader at OpenAI and an associate professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia. Clune’s work focuses on deep learning, evolving neural networks, and robotics.
Vincent Conitzer, Kimberly J. Jenkins Distinguished University Professor of New Technologies and professor of computer science, economics, and philosophy at Duke University. Conitzer’s work investigates AI’s objectives, game theory, and ethics.
Deborah Gordon, professor of biology at Stanford University. Gordon studies how ant colonies work without central control using networks of interactions, and how these networks evolve in changing environments.
Mortiz Hardt, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Hardt’s research investigates the reliability, validity, and societal impact of algorithms and machine learning.
Joel Z. Leibo, research scientist at DeepMind and research affiliate with the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. Leibo investigates and evaluates deep reinforcement learning agents and their performance of complex cognitive tasks like cooperation.
Sarah Mathew, associate professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. Mathew investigates how and why humans cooperate, and the evolution of our unique form of cooperation.
Deirdre K. Mulligan, professor in the School of Information at UC Berkeley. Mulligan’s research explores legal and technical means of protecting values such as privacy, freedom of expression, and fairness in emerging technical systems.
Johanna Thoma, associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. Thoma’s work at the intersection of philosophy, economics, and public policy includes practical rationality, decision theory, ethics, public policy, economic methodology, and the application of economic methods to philosophical problems.
“We’re so fortunate to have these world-leading scholars join us in June for what promises to be an exciting and productive set of discussions,” says Hadfield. “We’re aiming to pave a way forward for researchers to be influenced by each other in ways they wouldn’t otherwise be and to chart new research agendas that can guide better alignment between humans and machines.”
Want to learn more?
Visit the Absolutely Interdisciplinary website to learn more about the speakers and panels.
Register now for Absolutely Interdisciplinary on Eventbrite.
Check out other upcoming SRI events on our Events page.
The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society strives towards inclusion and equity. If you are experiencing financial constraints and wish to apply for subsidized admission to the conference, please contact Events Coordinator Jackelyn Ho at jackelyn.ho@utoronto.ca.
Browse stories by tag:
