Events

Digital disinformation presents a mounting threat to, and challenge for, liberal democracies. Global events like Brexit, electoral interference, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, have made the abstract threat of digital disinformation into a distinct reality. The shifting global balance of power, characterized by growing multipolarity, is unfolding alongside the expansion of tools, strategies, and spaces for adversarial states and non-state actors to expand their influence, disrupt multilateral diplomacy, threaten liberal democratic norms and values, and de-legitimize a rules-based global order. 

This interdisciplinary workshop will help to bring together awareness among the academic community, industry, civil society, and government, outlining and assessing the evolving threat of digital disinformation while also providing direction and guidance on how to protect liberal democracies like Canada from weaponized digital disinformation. 

The international and geopolitical landscape has become more volatile in recent years with the rise of populist nationalist leaders, a stagnating global economy, a renewed Cold War with Russia and China, and rising regional powers challenging long-held liberal norms.

The impact these forces are having on cybersecurity, technology supply chains, and energy systems, to name just a few domains, will continue to have significant disruptive impacts on business operations, customer relations, and executive decision-making.

In this webinar, Bessma Momani will dissect these and other related issues to help executives navigate this challenging new risk environment.

This virtual conference will focus on the latest developments in cybersecurity and privacy research, gaps hindering the collection of informative data, and the potential of big data generated through mobile and other devices, along with the use of AI methods in healthcare. Additionally, discussions will touch on issues surrounding public trust and its impact on government policy. Representatives from Health Canada and Statistics Canada will also provide observations on research and public policy and how to effectively move forward with research partnerships.

This event centres on our theme, “Protecting Diverse Application Domains", which will highlight current and future efforts within the cybersecurity and privacy sphere, with keynote speakers, panel discussions, and industry talks. This conference is open to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, entrepreneurs, start ups, government, sponsors, and businesses.

When it comes to generative AI, there seems to be a lingering question on top of every eDiscovery professional’s mind: are the robots coming for my job? Generative AI, technology that can autonomously create different outputs, is here to stay and while it has its limitations, this technology will only continue getting better.

Now, it’s not all doom and gloom from here. Generative AI’s rise doesn’t equate to your downfall. On the contrary, we believe that industry professionals can make generative AI their greatest asset.

In our upcoming workshop, we invite our community to come together to learn how we can use generative AI to uplevel what we do.

The School of Optometry & Vision Science, alongside the Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology (CBB), Waterloo.AI, Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute are hosting a full-day summit on Saturday, June 8, 2024. Gathering experts in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and privacy, leaders from the optometry profession in Canada, and industry to work collectively towards a national vision repository. Summit activities will include a combination of panel presentations and workshops to share use cases, identify needs, potential challenges and considerations required to develop infrastructure to receive, de-identify and organize vision and health data by optometry.