By: CIFAR
19 Apr, 2018
CIFAR launches AI & Society workshop call for proposals
April 19, 2018
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform our society in radical new ways, and is increasingly affecting our personal and professional lives. As AI becomes more sophisticated and commonplace, it will have increasingly profound societal impacts.
To support a global, interdisciplinary, and inclusive conversation on these issues, CIFAR issued a call on April 9 for a series of international research workshop proposals. Each workshop selected for funding will explore economic, legal, ethical and social perspectives on AI. In their proposals, researchers must include a plan to create a publication directed toward non-academic audiences such as policymakers and NGOs.
“The increasing capability and adoption of AI is creating a wide range of important opportunities, issues, and questions” says Brent Barron, CIFAR’s director of public policy. “We’re looking forward to engaging the global community to explore them from new perspectives.”
Proposals related to any aspect of the intersection of AI and society are welcome; however, CIFAR is encouraging several themes in particular.
These include policy (related to urban planning, education, transportation, work and law); global dynamics (involving trade, development, globalization, inequality and competition); as well as discovery and creation (including considerations of scholarship, art, bias, transparency, authorship and creativity).
The workshops are a natural outgrowth of CIFAR’s long history in studying not only the technical possibilities of AI, but its broader effects. These have been examined since the establishment of CIFAR’s very first program in 1983 – Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Society.
Adjudication of the proposals will be completed in August 2018, and the workshops are scheduled to take place through April of 2019.
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