*The* ***Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society*** at the University of Toronto has appointed a new cohort of six research leads to help shape the Institute’s ongoing research program. The new research leads bring expertise and insights on the social impacts of artificial intelligence from the fields of economics, computer science and engineering, literature, and philosophy.

The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (SRI) at the University of Toronto is pleased to announce the appointment of a new cohort of six research leads who will help shape SRI’s ongoing research program to ensure powerful technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) improve life for everyone.

The new research leads will provide expertise and insights from a wide range of disciplines, including economics, computer science and engineering, literature, and philosophy. The six appointees are: Ashton Anderson (Department of Computer Science), Avi Goldfarb (Rotman School of Management), David Lie (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Nisarg Shah (Department of Computer Science), Avery Slater (Department of English), and Karina Vold (Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science and Technology).

The appointees will serve two-year terms alongside Associate Directors Lisa Austin (Faculty of Law), Peter Loewen (Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy), and Sheila McIlraith (Department of Computer Science), and Director and Chair Gillian Hadfield (Faculty of Law, Rotman School of Management). Outgoing Research Leads Denis Walsh and Wendy H. Wong will continue making valued contributions to SRI as faculty affiliates within the Institute’s research community.

“We are delighted to expand SRI’s leadership to include exciting new research perspectives on how AI and other advanced technologies are transforming society,” said Hadfield. “Each new research lead brings a unique lens and expertise for deepening our understanding of the impacts of technology on society, and new frameworks for how we can meet today’s challenges with innovative and forward-thinking solutions.”

Exploring the diverse potentials of new technologies

An assistant professor in U of T’s Department of Computer Science, Ashton Anderson’s research seeks to quantify the societal effects of digital environments and the algorithms that power them to inform the design of a more harmonious algorithmic society. Anderson’s recent publications include a study in Nature exploring political polarization in online communities, and a SRI white paper on the cultural impact of recommender algorithms in music. His ongoing work with his SRI Graduate Fellow advisees including developing a human-like chess AI with Reid McIlroy-Young and exploring how Spotify’s algorithms affect user preferences with Lillio Mok.

As Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare, Avi Goldfarb is deeply engaged with how AI is transforming society. A professor at the Rotman School of Management and chief data scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, Goldfarb is well-known for his commentaries on AI’s economic impacts, with his bestselling Prediction Machines (co-authored with Ajay Agrawal and Joshua Gans) recently hailed by The Economist as one of the five best books to understand AI. A follow-up on AI and strategic decision-making, Power and Prediction, will be published this fall by Harvard Business Review Press.

A professor in the Edwards S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Secure and Reliable Systems, David Lie is returning for a second term as a SRI research lead, having served as part of the Institute’s inaugural cohort. Lie’s work focuses on security, mobile platforms, cloud computing, and bridging the divide between technology and policy. His recent research projects include collaborations with Lisa Austin on mobile app privacy, and a revised framework for Canadian privacy laws co-authored with Austin and SRI Faculty Affiliates Aleksandar Nikolov and Nicolas Papernot.

Through his work on voting and participatory budgeting, Nisarg Shah is building real-world applications that deploy algorithms to enable equitable social outcomes and examining the foundations of algorithmic fairness. An assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and an inaugural Schwartz Reisman fellow, Shah was named one of “AI’s 10 to Watch” by IEEE Intelligent Systems in 2020. As he observed in an interview with SRI, “Voting is much older than computer science, and even some of the mathematical sciences. Yet, somehow, there is still so much to do in voting theory… many complex, real-world phenomena have rarely been modeled or looked at formally.”

With a focus on contemporary literature and poetics, Avery Slater investigates the role of technology in re-conceptualizing human and nonhuman forms of linguistic creativity. An assistant professor in U of T’s Department of English, Slater uses critical theory to inquire how computational methods impact conceptions of self and language, and the political and ethical implications of new technologies. In a recent talk at U of T’s Centre for Ethics, Slater explored the significance of games as learning environments, demonstrating how an interdisciplinary lens can help illustrate challenges in applied machine learning research.

Karina Vold is an assistant professor in U of T’s Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science and Technology who explores the intersections between technology, philosophy, and cognitive science. An inaugural Schwartz Reisman Fellow, Vold has developed new courses on philosophy and AI, and is leading a SSHRC-funded research project on how AI can yield new forms of knowledge. “Humans are using AI to break past some of the conventions that guide our thinking,” Vold noted in a recent SRI interview. “We can gain new insights and perspectives on problem solving, and perhaps even new ways of looking at old problems, with AI systems.”

Expanding SRI’s research focus and networks

As the Schwartz Reisman Institute enters its fourth year of operation, the new research leads will spearhead several exciting initiatives to expand SRI’s network of scholars working at the intersection of technology and society.

Anderson will spearhead an initiative focused on developing methods for better human-AI collaboration and exploring the ethical implications of doing so. Despite revolutionary advances in AI systems, our ability to learn from and interact with them has been limited. Instead of aiming the full power of AI only at learning to act optimally, Anderson's work will seek to develop AI systems that perform well in human-compatible, interpretable, and safe ways.

In tandem with the promotion of his new book, Goldfarb will focus on exploring the future of the economy in an AI-enabled world, aiding in expanding SRI’s engagement with the social sciences and cultivating new avenues of research to help accelerate system-level changes to assist in the safe transformation of the economy through the productive adoption of AI.

Lie will continue to develop new partnerships and funding towards the creation of a Trusted Data Sharing Lab in collaboration with Lisa Austin and Faculty Affiliate Beth Coleman, in addition to a forthcoming white paper and special event focused on the regulation of cybersecurity.

Shah will develop new initiatives around the use of AI for democratic initiatives and algorithmic fairness, including the initiation of special events and forging connections between SRI and other institutions and agencies.

Slater will lead an initiative that considers the impact of gaming through an interdisciplinary lens. As digital culture becomes ever more saturated by online and alternative reality gaming, techniques of “gamification” have been increasingly deployed across a variety of contexts, from pedagogy and product design to policy and public health. Slater will develop a special event to address the social stakes of intensifying gamification in the context of advanced AI, as well as cultivating a partnership with the University of Chicago’s Weston Game Lab.

Rounding out this slate of activities, Vold will lead SRI’s involvement with the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence Society (PAIS), a international network that supports research on the understanding and design of AI systems that contribute to human flourishing, social justice, and robust democracies. Vold is also organizing a series of in-person events on the social and ethical implications of virtual and augmented reality.

The contributions of SRI’s new cohort of research leads will aid in the Institute’s impact, and help to realize its mission of contributing to the development of technical, regulatory, and governance tools for the responsible and inclusive deployment of AI and other powerful technologies, ensuring that new technologies benefit all of society.