The Royal Society of Canada (RSC) and Massey College are thrilled to present the second installment of the RSC Dialogues @ Massey series, Creativity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Human Innovation.
This dialogue will be led by Steve DiPaola and Joelle Pineau, who will explore the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the human creative process, from the arts and music to scientific and medical discovery.
In this spirited and open-ended discussion, speakers will examine how creatives have always embraced new tools. They will consider the history of human creativity, including the role of tools in the creative process from ancient to modern times, and how emerging AI tools, like today's commercially available generative language and visual systems, are changing how we create and innovate.
Speakers will conclude by analyzing the opportunities and challenges presented by AI as a new tool for creatives in all fields, including future AI tools, and they will address the ethical, legal, and social implications of using AI in creative fields, including the need for transparency and accountability in their development and use.
Speakers
Steve DiPaola, Professor, Artist, and Scientist, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University
Steve DiPaola is a pioneer in AI based computational creativity exploring the marriage of cognitive science and artificial intelligence-based modelling. He looks at how they can be modelled in computational/cognitive modelling with applications in science, e-health, education, and the arts. His expertise conjoins neuroscience, artificial intelligence with human mechanisms of creativity, expression, and empathy. He does this to build foundational cognitive theories on how humans are creative, how they express, have empathy, creating new forms of computational, social, and artistic artifacts. His fine artwork has been exhibited at major museums including the MOMA, Tate and Whitney museums. As a cognitive based AI scientist, he has over 100 scientific papers including his AI systems that emulate fully talking, perceiving, empathetic 3D chatbot characters.
Joelle Pineau, Professor and William Dawson Scholar, the School of Computer Science, McGill University
Joelle Pineau is a Professor and William Dawson Scholar at the School of Computer Science at McGill University, where she co-directs the Reasoning and Learning Lab. She is a core academic member of Mila and a Canada CIFAR AI chairholder. She is also a VP, AI research at Meta (previously Facebook), where she leads the Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team. She holds a BASc in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo, and an MSc and PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Pineau's research focuses on developing new models and algorithms for planning and learning in complex partially-observable domains. She also works on applying these algorithms to complex problems in robotics, health care, games and conversational agents. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Machine Learning Research and is Past-President of the International Machine Learning Society. She is a recipient of NSERC's E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship (2018), a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Senior Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists by the Royal Society of Canada, and a 2019 recipient of the Governor General's Innovation Awards.
Moderator
Omayra Issa, CBC National Reporter
Omayra Issa is a national reporter with CBC News, after serving as producer and news anchor. She co-created and led CBC’s series Black on the Prairies, which has garnered national and international accolades, changed education policy, and received several Digital Publishing Awards and RTDNA, celebrating the best in Canadian journalism. Named a YWCA Woman of Distinction, she was the 2022-23 CBC/Radio-Canada William Southam Journalism Fellow at Massey College. She is a frequent lecturer, panelist, moderator, and keynote speaker at institutions, colleges, and universities in Canada and around the world. Omayra is a former board member of the Canadian Association of Journalists. Born in Morocco and raised in Niger, Omayra is fluent in five languages. She holds a B.A. in Economics and English Literature fromthe University of Alberta.
For more information, please contact adomaradzki@rsc-src.ca.
