From AI chatbots marketed as digital partners to voice assistants designed for intimacy, these systems promise connection while raising urgent questions about privacy, manipulation, and digital addiction.

With two new appointments and six renewed roles, the Schwartz Reisman Institute’s 2025–26 cohort of research leads will advance projects on trust, creative pedagogy, agentic AI, democratic fairness, and human–machine relationships, fostering public dialogue and policy insights on the transformative role of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence.

The Schwartz Reisman Institute is proud to announce its SRI Seminar Series programming for Fall 2025. This semester, an extraordinary lineup of scholars, technologists, and legal thinkers will examine urgent issues at the intersection of technology, governance, and society. Through thought-provoking presentations of new research and ideas, the series will explore topics ranging from the ethics of AI in education and the creative industries, to the governance of advanced AI systems, to the social and political dynamics of democratic engagement in the digital age.

The Schwartz Reisman Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of 24 new faculty affiliates for the 2025–26 academic year—its largest incoming cohort to date. Representing a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds, the new affiliates bring deep expertise in artificial intelligence (AI), data science, public policy, digital culture, healthcare, ethics, law, sustainability, and education.

At SRI’s annual conference, participants discussed future directions and key challenges in AI research, including the complexities of aligning advanced AI with human values and interdisciplinary perspectives on AI safety.

The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society is proud to announce the appointment of fifteen new graduate fellows from across the University of Toronto.

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.

The Schwartz Reisman Institute’s annual academic conference Absolutely Interdisciplinary returns for 2025 to explore interdisciplinary approaches to AI governance, risk and safety.

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.

The SRI Seminar Series returns for 2025 with leading experts exploring AI’s impacts from a wide range of disciplines, including computer science, psychology, law, philosophy, and communication.

What kinds of solutions should we consider for gaining access to data, and which purposes can justify this access? These and related questions were the topic of an event co-hosted by SRI and the Berkman Klein Center’s Institute for Rebooting Social Media at Harvard University coordinated by Lisa Austin.

Despite the growing use of ChatGPT, we lack a method to evaluate its performance and potential risks. SRI Associate Director Lisa Austin, Faculty Fellow Shion Guha, and Faculty Affiliates Anastasia Kuzminykh and Shurui Zhou are setting out to study and analyze the impact of generative AI on a wide range of communities. Learn more about "Toward a Fair and Inclusive Future of Work with ChatGPT."