NSERC CREATE in Responsible Development of AI (RAI)

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A consortium of researchers from Ryerson, McGill, Western, Waterloo and UQAM will develop a training program to equip the next generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts with active awareness of societal, moral, ethical, and policy concerns, as well as the skills to design impactful AI projects for social good to improve the lives of Canadians. This regular-stream CREATE program is designed with full awareness that AI technology can be used in ways that improve well-being, health, services and decision-making, but can also have unintended by-products that discriminate, reinforce inequalities, infringe upon human rights, socially sort and disrupt democratic processes, limit access to services and intensify surveillance and unfair treatment of marginalized communities and minority groups. In addition to exploring cutting-edge research in AI, cohorts of NSE and non-NSE trainees will be coached to recognize the societal threats, challenges and negative impacts of deploying AI innovations in purely business-oriented projects or those driven by ethics-agnostic problem solving and/or out of economic self-interest. The training will cover theoretical and hands-on engagement with issues of bias, privacy, transparency, regulation, governance, security, and justice as well as critical analysis, advocacy, knowledge mobilization and EDI. Creating more than 180 annual training opportunities, the program will cover three thematic research areas in three crosscutting training streams, namely AI Ethics by Design, Privacy-enhanced Analytics, and AI Accountability. The thematic research areas will allow the trainees to pursue cutting edge research work and advance the state of the art in AI. In addition, the trainees will be involved in three training streams that cover how AI should be responsibly developed and deployed from alternative perspectives: government, civil society, and industry.