AI, Ethics and Society Conference
Conference Overview
In June of 2018, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a commitment alongside French President Emmanuel Macron to create an "international study group on artificial intelligence made up of experts from government, industry, and civil society." In light of this commitment the Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) at the University of Alberta is organizing an interdisciplinary and intersectoral conference to bring together researchers in the history, ethics, policy, business and science of AI with stakeholders from business and government. This conference will connect AI researchers in computing science with social science and humanities researchers and stakeholders from business and government. The goal of the conference is to mobilize knowledge around the social and ethical impact of AI in a fashion that encourages open and safe innovation beneficial to all Canadians.
Conference Dates: May 8-10, 2019
Location: Stollery Executive Development Centre, 5th floor, Alberta School of Business Building
Free to attend and everyone welcome!
The five target audiences of the conference include Industry Leaders, Government Representatives, Scholars, Future Researchers and Educators, and the Interested Public. The conference includes half-day and full-day workshops, academic presentations, industry-led panels and an "unconference session" designed to develop an Edmonton Agenda for research and education by and for future researchers. The conference will create networking opportunities to connect with organizations outside the university by involving multiple stakeholder communities towards defining a research and education agenda for humanists and social scientists interested in AI. The conference and associated publication activities cover several AI ethics related research topics categorized under four main themes, each theme introduced by a keynote:
- Theme 1: Ethics
- Theme 2: Education
- Theme 3: Governance and Policy
- Theme 4: Indigenous Approaches
Half-day workshops will explore AI concerns in government and industry, the development of standards for AI, AI in financial institutions, and big data, while Full-Day Workshops will establish an official AI Edmonton Agenda and introduce Generative AI to artificial intelligence and machine learning for researchers in the humanities and interpretative social sciences. The workshops, especially the unconference, are designed towards concrete outcomes of use to participants and others and will produce draft concepts for:
- Codes of ethics,
- Design guides,
- Ethics taxonomies and vocabularies,
- Research agendas for interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration,
- Sets of principles for Canadian projects, and
- Other shared information resources.
Organized by the Kule Institute for Advanced Study in partnership with the School of Library and Information Studies, the Department of Philosophy and Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, ATB Financial, IEEE, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, and the International Center for Information Ethics.