SRI Director and Chair Gillian Hadfield has been named a Canada CIFAR AI Chair, joining a growing cohort of leaders in the country’s robust artificial intelligence research ecosystem. The chairs will help advance Canadian leadership in priority areas under the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy at CIFAR. Hadfield is the first social scientist affiliated with the Vector Institute to be named to the program.

How can we harness the economic benefits of AI innovation? In June 2022, the Schwartz Reisman Institute convened a roundtable with the Business Development Bank of Canada to explore how AI can be better used in financial services, featuring panelists from financial institutions, leading startups, universities, and government. The event’s findings have been issued in a new report that details the importance of responsible AI and new approaches to regulation.

Will Canada’s newly-proposed Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA) generate incentives for best practices when it comes to data privacy? SRI Associate Director Lisa Austin, Faculty Affiliates Aleksandar Nikolov and Nicolas Papernot, and Research Lead David Lie argue the CPPA’s reliance on deidentified data ensures it will fall short in protecting privacy.

In June 2022, the Canadian federal government introduced Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, which contains newly-proposed legislation relating to consumer privacy, data protection, and the first comprehensive laws governing artificial intelligence (AI) systems in Canada. In the first of a series of posts covering the potential impact of Bill C-27, SRI Policy Researcher Maggie Arai explores the bill’s key takeaways.

How is virtual reality changing the way we live? Does living in a virtual landscape create new ethical and moral problems? At the first annual Technophilosophy September Soirée, SRI Research Lead Karina Vold convened an interdisciplinary panel of University of Toronto scholars to discuss the impacts of new technologies on the way we understand our world.

The Schwartz Reisman Institute is launching a new speaker and mentorship series to promote gender equity in artificial intelligence research, in collaboration with Deloitte. The Women in AI series will convene leading female AI researchers to share knowledge through seminar events that promote opportunities for women across the technology sector.

SRI Graduate Fellow Reid McIlroy-Young’s new research explores the concept of “mimetic models”: algorithms designed to simulate the behaviour of an individual in new situations. In a new paper, McIlroy-Young reflects on the ethical implications of such models, in what scenarios they might be used, and directions for future research.

The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society at the University of Toronto has appointed five new 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, literature, and philosophy.

The SRI Seminar Series convenes the Schwartz Reisman Institute’s community to discuss cutting-edge ideas and scholarship at the intersection of technology and society. The 2022 Fall Seminar Series begins on September 14, 2022 with a presentation by Julie Shah, director of the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

In a session at Absolutely Interdisciplinary 2022, SRI Associate Director Peter Loewen, Jonathan Stray of the Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI, and Taylor Owen of McGill University discussed what methods and principles might be used to redesign the algorithms that decide what billions of people see in accordance with democratic values.

The rise of the information society and the ubiquity of digital technologies brings new challenges for governance, as traditional institutions might not be sufficient to address the complex issues emerging from these new tools. In a talk at Absolutely Interdisciplinary 2022, SRI Faculty Fellow Anna Su explored the phenomenon of digital constitutionalism and the importance of human rights to balance powers in the digital realm.

Can the data collected by private companies be recognized as a public resource to be leveraged for social good? What obstacles stand in the way? In a panel discussion at Absolutely Interdisciplinary 2022, SRI Associate Director Lisa Austin discussed the shape of data today with Eric Horvitz (Microsoft), Aziz Z. Huq (University of Chicago), Robert Seamans (Stern School of Business, NYU), and Pamela Snively (TELUS).