GI Faculty Member Dr. Lai-Tze Fan Speaks on Artificial Intelligence

GI Faculty Member and Canada Research Chair (CRC) Dr. Lai-Tze Fan (Sociology and Legal Studies) recently appeared on a panel hosted by the TRuST Scholarly Network in collaboration with the Perimeter Institute and on the CTV news show The Mike Farwell Show to discuss her work on the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI). Dr. Fan’s research on AI is concerned with the ethical implications of this emerging technology and design flaws such as racist facial recognition, sexism in voice assistant programs, and other societal inequalities that are reinforced by these technologies.

During the panel Dr. Fan highlighted how AI systems are inherently biased due to what groups of information have been used to train them and what information have been systematically excluded. Diverse voices and perspectives from marginalized communities have been missing from the datasets needed to train AI. Dr. Fan explained that if AI is to be made in a more equitable way, things would have to change from the design stage to ensure that these diverse voices and perspectives are built into the system from the very beginning.

Dr. Fan went on to make similar comments on The Mike Farwell Show where she responded to the question “Can we really trust artificial intelligence?” Farwell brought up common questions from a concerned public worried about AI taking jobs from individual people. Dr. Fan responded to these concerns saying that it is not a question of can the technology be trusted but rather can the people and industries creating AI build it in a way that is ethical and responsible. She highlighted how AI can have many applications such as being used in professions that have a high degree of risk or danger.

To explore these issues further, Dr. Fan has received funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to build The Unseen-AI (U&AI) Lab and  has been appointed as a Tier 2 CRC  in Technology and Social Change.