What Now? AI

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Alumni

Startups

Vector Institute

The creative industry is poised to be forever changed by artificial intelligence.

Writing tools like ChatGPT and image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E have exploded into the mainstream. Adobe built its own version of generative AI technology for its creative suites and OpenAI announced its text-to-video model, Sora.

What impact will these tools and models have on the creative process? How will they change the role of an artist?

In the fourth episode of What Now? AI, hosts Beth Coleman and Rahul Krishnan dive into these questions with AI researchers Sanja Fidler of the �ؿ�ζSM and Nick Frosst, who co-founded the startup Cohere.

Listen to episode four on  Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio and Amazon. Watch episode four on YouTube. 

Fidler, the vice president of AI research at NVIDIA and an associate professor of mathematical and computational sciences at U of T Mississauga, says that while AI technology is still in its early stage, it has the potential to provide artists with more adaptability and creative control.

“When artists see these methods like text-to-x, text-to-image or text-to-video, I feel that they have pushback because now there is only text that allows you to control the content,” says Fidler, an affiliate faculty member at the Vector Institute, which she co-founded.

“I think artists do want to have this iterative creative control. They have some idea in their head, and they have all these tools that allowed them to go from that idea into the final product. We want to do the same thing with AI as well.”

Frosst, who sings in the band Good Kid, says he doesn’t use large language models to help him write songs – only to help analyze lyrics and themes.

“I’m not really looking to optimize my artistic expression,” says Frosst, who completed his undergraduate degree in computer science and cognitive science at U of T.

“I don’t really want to write a new Good Kid song and be less involved. I want to be more involved.”

Frosst believes AI will change the way art is created, but not to the point where people aren’t interested in the artists who are making it.

“We want to know who made it, and that’s mostly what’s enjoyable about it.”

About the hosts:

What Now? AI, Episode 3: Innovation for Good

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 20:47:11 +0000

What Now? AI, Episode 3: Innovation for Good Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 04/18/2024 - 16:47

Topic

Unity Health

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Research & Innovation

Startups

While the news headlines about AI often focus on dangers and risks, the potential for life-saving innovation in fields such as health care is huge.

In the third episode of What Now? AI, co-hosts Beth Coleman and Rahul Krishnan of the �ؿ�ζSM are joined by experts Christine Allen and Andrew Pinto to discuss AI’s potential to advance drug development and dramatically improve primary care.

Listen to episode three on Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio and Amazon. Watch episode three on YouTube.

Allen, a professor in U of T’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and an expert in drug formulation and development, co-founded Intrepid Labs Inc. with Alán Aspuru-Guzik, a professor in the departments of chemistry and computer science in U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science.

One of the first startups to emerge from the Acceleration Consortium at U of T, Intrepid Labs is accelerating pharmaceutical drug development through the integration of AI, automation and advanced computing.

“It’s this concept of using AI to explore the unexplored,” Allen says.

“What if that formulation could really transform the properties and performance of your drug is one of those unexplored formulations. That will then take that drug through clinical development smoothly and get it to patients faster, which is really the goal.”

Meanwhile, Pinto, a family physician at St. Michael’s Hospital and director of the Upstream Lab, Unity Health Toronto, focuses his research on addressing the social determinants of health by running clinical trials of interventions and using AI tools for surveillance of respiratory illness.

“When we started to do this work around AI in primary care, we wanted to be directed by primary care providers and patients,” says Pinto, an associate professor in the department of family and community medicine in U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine and at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

Reducing health-care inequities is top of mind for Pinto. His lab focuses on implementing AI to prioritize community engagement and bridge socioeconomic gaps to mitigate biases.

“We’re using these tools to look at all of the patients in a population and then focus our attention on the people who need it most.”

About the hosts:

What Now? AI, Episode 2: Safe and Accountable

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 12:57:17 +0000

What Now? AI, Episode 2: Safe and Accountable Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 04/11/2024 - 08:57

Mariam Matti

Topic

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Faculty of Law

Research & Innovation

Vector Institute

As AI becomes more integrated into our lives, how do we make sure it aligns with our values while minimizing risks?

In the second episode of What Now? AI, hosts Beth Coleman and Rahul Krishnan are joined by �ؿ�ζSM experts Gillian Hadfield and Roger Grosse as they tackle critical questions surrounding AI safety, regulation and alignment.

Listen to episode two on Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio and Amazon. Watch episode two on YouTube.

Grosse, an associate professor of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and a founding member of the Vector Institute, joined the technical staff on the alignment team at Anthropic, an AI safety and research company based in San Francisco, during a sabbatical last year.

He calls working on AI research and systems while investigating safety a “difficult needle to thread.”

“As you move up the ladder of different AI capabilities, new requirements start kicking in – in terms of keeping the models secure from bad actors and being able to make sure they won’t intentionally carry out harmful plans,” says Grosse, a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.

Hadfield, a professor of law and strategic management in the Faculty of Law and the inaugural Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society, has proposed a national registry for large AI models. She thinks companies should disclose to governments what they’re building, the data being used and the AI model’s capabilities.

“This is a unique moment in human history,” says Hadfield, who holds a CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute for AI and served as a senior policy adviser to OpenAI from 2018 to 2023. “I think this is the first time that you have such a powerful technology that is being developed almost exclusively within private technology companies, so the public and the academic sector don’t have full visibility into how the technology is working.”

About the hosts:

Beth Coleman is an associate professor at U of T Mississauga’s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and the Faculty of Information. She is also a research lead on AI policy and praxis at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Coleman authored Reality Was Whatever Happened: Octavia Butler AI and Other Possible Worlds using art and generative AI.

Rahul Krishnan is an assistant professor in U of T’s department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. He is a Canada CIFAR Chair at the Vector Institute, a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and a faculty member at the Temerty Centre for AI Research and Education in Medicine (T-CAIREM).

How will AI change our world? U of T podcast explores technology’s impact on society

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 15:17:45 +0000

How will AI change our world? U of T podcast explores technology’s impact on society

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 04/04/2024 - 11:17

Mariam Matti

Topic

Unity Health

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Alumni

CIFAR

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Faculty of Law

Geoffrey Hinton

Startups