
AI agents pose new governance challenges
How do we successfully govern AI systems that can act autonomously online, making decisions with minimal human oversight? SRI Faculty Affiliate Noam Kolt explores this challenge, highlighting the rise of AI agents, their risks, and the urgent need for transparency, safety testing, and regulatory oversight.
Schwartz Reisman Institute Leaders Join Canada's Push for Safe AI
SRI Director David Lie and Co-Chair David Duvenaud were appointed to Canada’s new Safe & Secure AI Advisory Group. Their expertise will help shape policies at this crucial time in AI's development and contribute to Canada's efforts to keep these powerful technologies safe.
Absolutely Interdisciplinary returns this spring to explore new frontiers in AI research
The Schwartz Reisman Institute’s annual academic conference Absolutely Interdisciplinary returns for 2025 to explore interdisciplinary approaches to AI governance, risk and safety.
Unequal outcomes: Tackling bias in clinical AI models
A new study by SRI Graduate Affiliate Michael Colacci sheds light on the frequency of biased outcomes when machine learning algorithms are used in healthcare contexts, advocating for more comprehensive and standardized approaches to evaluating bias in clinical AI.
Safeguarding the future: Evaluating sabotage risks in powerful AI systems
As AI systems grow more powerful, ensuring their safe development is critical. A recent paper led by David Duvenaud with contributions from Roger Grosse introduces new methods to evaluate AI sabotage risks, providing insights into preventing advanced models from undermining oversight, masking harmful behaviors, or disrupting human decision-making.
New cohort of SRI faculty affiliates and postdocs announced for 2025
The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (SRI) is thrilled to welcome eight new faculty affiliates and three new postdoctoral fellows to its vibrant research community.
Roger Grosse and Marzyeh Ghassemi awarded AI2050 fellowships to advance research on beneficial AI
Schmidt Sciences has named SRI Chair Roger Grosse and Faculty Affiliate Marzyeh Ghassemi to its 2024 cohort of AI2050 Fellows. The program funds senior researchers and early career scholars to address a wide range of global challenges in AI.
Call for 2025 Schwartz Reisman Institute Graduate Fellowships now open
The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society has launched its call for graduate fellows, open to all University of Toronto graduate students whose research explores the social impacts of new technologies.
Humans and LLMs: Partners in problem-solving for an increasingly complex world
A recent hackathon and symposium co-sponsored by SRI and U of T's Data Sciences Institute explored new ways of using large language models responsibly, with students and faculty receiving training on how to design efficient, interdisciplinary solutions to promote responsible AI usage.
Innovating care: Exploring the role of AI in Ontario’s health sector
What opportunities and challenges are there for the use of AI in healthcare? At a recent SRI workshop, experts explored how AI is transforming Ontario's healthcare sector, highlighting its potential to improve care and exploring pressing challenges around patient involvement, health equity, and trustworthy implementation.
What do we want AI to optimize for?
SRI researcher Silviu Pitis draws on decision theory to study how the principles of reward design for reinforcement learning agents are formulated. He also aims to understand how large language models make decisions by examining their implicit assumptions. Pitis has received a prestigious OpenAI Superalignment Fast Grant to support his research.
SRI experts tackle questions about AI safety, ethics during panel discussion
What does safe artificial intelligence look like? Could AI go rogue and pose an existential threat to humanity? These were among the pressing questions tackled by SRI experts during a recent panel discussion on AI safety.