*L to R:* ***David Duvenaud*** *and* ***Roger Grosse*** *have been appointed Schwartz Reisman Chairs in Technology and Society;* ***David Lie*** *has been appointed Director of SRI.*

As the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (SRI) enters its sixth year in operation, world-leading computer security expert David Lie will take on the role of the institute’s director, while two renowned AI safety experts—Roger Grosse and David Duvenaud—are being appointed Schwartz Reisman Chairs in Technology and Society.

David Lie is a professor at the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Toronto and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Secure and Reliable Systems. He also holds cross-appointments in U of T’s Department of Computer Science and Faculty of Law, and is a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute.

Roger Grosse and David Duvenaud are both associate professors in the Department of Computer Science at U of T and founding members of the Vector Institute where they are currently faculty members and Canada CIFAR AI Chairs.

Grosse and Duvenaud will hold their new appointments for five-year terms, while Lie will hold his for a four-year term.

Lie, Grosse, and Duvenaud succeed inaugural SRI Director and Chair Gillian Hadfield, whose five-year term as Schwartz Reisman Chair ends in June of 2024. Hadfield stepped down as SRI’s director in December of 2023, and the role of interim director has been filled for the past six months by Kelly Lyons, a professor in the Faculty of Information with a cross-appointment to the Department of Computer Science. The Chairship that Hadfield held has now been increased from one appointment to two for Grosse and Duvenaud.

David Lie is a world-leading computer security expert whose research goal is to make computer systems more secure and trustworthy through a variety of approaches including computer architecture, formal verification, techniques using operating systems, and networking. Lie was one of SRI’s inaugural research leads when the institute was established in 2019, and has worked on a number of interdisciplinary research projects at the intersection of computing, policy, law, and the use, stewardship, and governance of data.

Lie’s ongoing collaborations with Lisa Austin, also one of SRI’s inaugural research leads, include work on data trusts, digital privacy, user behaviour, safe data-sharing sites, and more. Austin will return to her role as an SRI associate director for the 2024-25 academic year after completing her term as a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and will resume interdisciplinary collaborations and close cooperation on institute leadership with Lie.

Grosse and Duvenaud are both globally renowned experts in AI safety—a field of research dedicated to ensuring that AI systems behave safely and reliably, with minimal risk of unintended consequences or harm to humanity. In addition to their academic roles at U of T, they are both currently working with Anthropic, an AI safety and research company building reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. Grosse helped to develop a new AI safety tool on Anthropic’s Alignment team, while Duvenaud is working on designing evaluations and mitigations for possible catastrophic misalignment of future AI models.

Grosse and Duvenaud join Department of Computer Science colleague and continuing SRI Associate Director Sheila McIlraith, also a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute, whose research in human-compatible AI and AI alignment adds strength and breadth to the technical team. McIlraith has played a leadership role at SRI in positioning the institute for increasingly targeted focus on issues in AI safety.

“David Lie is the ideal person to lead SRI at this moment, and I’m thrilled that he will be serving in this role,” says Lyons. “He is the paragon of interdisciplinary collaboration, a distinguishing hallmark of SRI. We pride ourselves on the wide variety of academic disciplines represented in the SRI community—from economics to philosophy to computer science and beyond—and David will now lead this diverse and robust community as we head into our next exciting chapter.”

“Furthermore, Roger Grosse and David Duvenaud are both doing incredibly important work in AI safety, governance, and alignment,” adds Lyons. “Their prestigious appointments as intellectual thought leaders of SRI will ensure that we—our institute, the University of Toronto, and Canada at large—will lead the way in ensuring that powerful technologies are deployed responsibly, safely, and for public benefit.”

Grosse and Duvenaud’s appointments coincide with steadily increasing global debate around the future potential risks posed by advanced AI systems, with expert commentary on the topic coming from founders in the field of deep learning like Geoffrey Hinton—an SRI Advisory Board member. Hinton’s November 2023 lecture on whether digital intelligence would replace biological intelligence drew a full house at Convocation Hall.

“With initiatives like the Canadian federal government’s intent to create a new AI safety institute and the U.S.’s new program to advance sociotechnical testing and evaluation of AI, it couldn’t be a better time to have Roger Grosse and David Duvenaud bring their leading voices in this area to our community—and the world,” says SRI Executive Director Monique Crichlow.

“And as we strive to not only mitigate the harm that can be caused by advanced technologies, but also create publicly-beneficial applications of advanced AI systems, David Lie’s expertise in protecting advanced computing technologies from malicious attacks, data breaches, and unauthorized access will be crucial as well,” says Crichlow.

Lie, Grosse, and Duvenaud are set to begin their appointments on July 1, 2024.