Looking back on past CEIMIA events and participations: January – June 2023

Webinars, Symposiums, Summits… Since January 2023, opportunities to showcase CEIMIA and GPAI’s work and to meet with the local and international AI ecosystems have not lacked for the CEIMIA team members and GPAI Experts! Let’s take a look back at a few of them.

Photo credit: SIAIA

What is the social impact of AI in Africa? That was the theme of SIAIA 2023, a side event to the AAAI 2023 conference that Thomas Mboa, CEIMIA’s Researcher in Residence, attended earlier this year. For this day-long workshop, a variety of specialists came together to discuss the AI research, development and activities that have been carried out or remain to be carried out to empower communities for years to come. Thomas drew on his research work at CEIMIA to guide the panel discussion around the need to create an environment of trust, for fair and equitable data sharing, and where individuals and communities can assert their rights to data access, ownership and sovereignty, in order to foster the development of responsible AI applications in the service of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

In March, in collaboration with our partners the Alan Turing Institute and AfroLeadership CSO Cameroon, animated a workshop on the challenges of data justice in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in contexts where data is collected and manipulated for collective benefit. Indeed, “global standards of good practice in data governance tend to reflect the priorities of high-income countries, leaving low-income countries in the role of ‘standards adopters'”. Stay tuned, data justice is a key topic we’ll be focusing on this fall!

In April, we set out to meet members of the Canadian government and representatives of GPAI member countries in Canada, to present our various programs and projects. This resulted in a half-day hybrid conference in Ottawa, where a few industry companies  and a total of 10 member countries attended to hear project managers and experts present the progress and key findings of three projects, including a standalone CEIMIA project: AI Regulatory Policy: A Comparative Framework (CEIMIA project), Artificial Intelligence for Pandemic Resilience, and Responsible AI Strategy for the Environment: AI for Biodiversity Preservation. The discussion then continued over cocktails with GPAI expert Tanya Berger-Wolf, who participated in person. 

Visit the project pages to find out more!

Thank you to project AI Leads and managers Lama Saouma and Arnaud Quenneville-Langis for moderating the discussions, as well as to panelists Marjorie Buchser, Executive Director of the Digital Society Initiative – Chatham House; Ann R. and Andrew H. Tisch Distinguished Visiting Fellow – The Brookings Institution, Center for Technology & Innovation; Michael O’Sullivan, Associate Professor, Engineering – University of Auckland and Deputy Director – Te Pūnaha Matatini; Nathaniel Hupert, Associate Professor of Population Health Sciences and Medicine – Weill Medical College, Cornell University; Lee Tiedrich, Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Ethical Technology – Duke University in Science & Society; and Tanya Berger-Wolf, Director of the Institute for Translational Data Analysis and the Ohio State University for their availability and involvement.

In May, Sophie Fallaha, CEIMIA’s Executive Director, was invited to take part in a round-table discussion on generative AI and its impact on the labour market, alongside Valérie Pisano, President of MILA, and Luc Vinet, Managing Director of IVADO. Discussions included the impact of generative AI on certain tasks and the need to adopt responsible governance principles from the beginning of its adoption, a tour of the various existing approaches to regulate this disruptive technology, and the importance of cross-border interoperability, as well as points of reflection on how AI can be integrated into organizations for beneficial purposes.

Video credit: Digital India

On June 1, the first Expert Working Group Workshop took place, an initiative of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India, host country of the next Summit and incoming Council Chair of the GPAI. Dedicated to the Data Governance working group, this first session is part of a series of four online events aimed at showcasing the outputs of the GPAI and fostering knowledge-sharing between the expert groups and member countries. The projects Data Justice, Data Institutions, Privacy-enhancing (and adjacent) technologies, From co-generated data to generative artificial intelligence: New rights and governance models in digital ecosystemsFrom co-generated data to generative artificial intelligence: New rights and governance models in digital ecosystems, and The role of governments as a provider of data for artificial intelligence were the focus of the workshop.