University of Toronto

AI is poised to impact the political process in profound ways. How do we navigate this uncharted territory? Hosts Beth Coleman and Rahul Krishnan are joined by experts Peter Loewen and Harper Reed to unravel the potential influence of AI on democracy and the spread of misinformation. 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 the 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). About the guests: Peter Loewen is the director of U of T’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and a professor in the department of political science in the Faculty of Arts & Science. He is also the associate director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. His research focuses on how politicians can make better decisions, how citizens can make better choices and how governments can address the disruption of technology and harness its opportunities. Harper Reed is a technologist who served as a chief technology officer for Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Reed has pioneered crowdsourcing at Threadless.com, founded Modest Inc. and guided the software team at PayPal. His most recent venture was General Galactic Corporation.

The rapid advance of AI writing tools, image generators and text-to-video models opens a new world for creative possibilities. It also raises questions about the role of the artist, the nature of creativity – and ethics. Hosts Beth Coleman and Rahul Krishnan dive into these topics with guests Sanja Fidler and Nick Frosst. About the hosts: Beth Coleman is an associate professor at U of T Mississauga’s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology (https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/iccit/) 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 (http://srinstitute.utoronto.ca/). Coleman authored Reality Was Whatever Happened: Octavia Butler AI and Other Possible Worlds (https://k-verlag.org/books/beth-coleman-reality-was-whatever-happened/) 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 https://tcairem.utoronto.ca/). About the guests: Nick Frosst is a co-founder of Cohere (https://cohere.com/), a Toronto-based startup that develops large language models for enterprise use. Frosst did his undergraduate degree in computer science and cognitive science at U of T and was the first employee of Geoffrey Hinton’s Google Brain lab in Toronto. He is the singer in an indie rock band called Good Kid (https://goodkidofficial.com/). Sanja Fidler is vice president of AI research at NVIDIA (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/research/), leading the company’s research lab in Toronto. She is also an associate professor of mathematical and computational science at the University of Toronto Mississauga and an affiliate faculty member at the Vector Institute, which she co-founded. The co-author of more than 130 scientific papers in computer vision, machine learning and natural language processing, she has received the University of Toronto’s Innovation Award and the Connaught New Researcher Award, among other accolades. Fidler completed her Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto.

While a lot of the news around AI is doom and gloom, the potential for positive innovation in health care offers a hopeful perspective. Hosts Beth Coleman and Rahul Krishnan are joined by University of Toronto experts Christine Allen and Andrew Pinto to talk about the transformative power of AI in health care, from revolutionizing primary care to advancing drug development. About the hosts: Beth Coleman is an associate professor at U of T Mississauga’s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology (https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/iccit/) 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 (https://srinstitute.utoronto.ca/). Coleman authored Reality Was Whatever Happened: Octavia Butler AI and Other Possible Worlds (https://k-verlag.org/books/beth-coleman-reality-was-whatever-happened/) 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 (https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/) and department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine (https://temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/). 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 https://tcairem.utoronto.ca/). Guests Andrew Pinto is the founder and director of the Upstream Lab (https://upstreamlab.org/), a research team focused on addressing social determinants of health, population health management, and utilizing data science for proactive care. Pinto is a family physician at St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto, and 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. Christine Allen is a professor in U of T’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. She is a member of the scientific leadership team of the Acceleration Consortium (https://acceleration.utoronto.ca/) at U of T. Allen is a co-founder and CEO of Intrepid Labs Inc. (https://intrepidlabs.tech/), a company that is accelerating pharmaceutical drug development through integration of AI, automation and advanced computing.

Safe and Accountable Hosts Beth Coleman and Rahul Krishnan navigate the challenging terrain of AI safety and governance. In this episode, they are joined by University of Toronto experts Gillian Hadfield and Roger Grosse as they explore critical questions about AI’s risks, regulatory challenges and how to align the technology with human values. Hosts Beth Coleman is an associate professor at U of T Mississauga’s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology (https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/iccit/) 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 (https://srinstitute.utoronto.ca/). Coleman authored Reality Was Whatever Happened: Octavia Butler AI and Other Possible Worlds (https://k-verlag.org/books/beth-coleman-reality-was-whatever-happened/) 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 (https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/) and department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine (https://temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/). 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 https://tcairem.utoronto.ca/). Guests Gillian Hadfield is a professor of law and strategic management in the Faculty of Law (https://www.law.utoronto.ca/) at U of T and is the inaugural Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society. She holds a CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute for AI and served as a senior policy adviser to OpenAI from 2018 to 2023. Roger Grosse is an associate professor of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and a founding member of the Vector Institute (https://vectorinstitute.ai/). He is a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and was part of the technical staff on the alignment team at Anthropic, an AI safety and research company based in San Francisco.

University of Toronto researchers Rahul Krishnan and Beth Coleman dive into the world of AI – how far we’ve come, where we are heading and the potentially profound impact for society. What Now? AI is a University of Toronto podcast series that dives into the world of artificial intelligence. Join hosts Beth Coleman and Rahul Krishnan as they explore – and demystify – the transformative potential of AI and its impact on society with the help of leading experts from the university. Coleman is an associate professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology at U of T Mississauga and U of T’s Faculty of Information. She is also a research lead on AI policy and praxis at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. 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 also a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute and Canada Research Chair in computational medicine. 01:24 Geoffrey Hinton's warning about AI 03:21 Regulating a multi-billion dollar industry 04:50 How is AI being trained? 05:58 AI as a tool 07:08 What can we learn from chatbots? 08:28 Who watches the Watchmen?

Director of the Citizen Lab, Ron Deibert sits down with Randy to breakdown everything from privacy and propaganda, to how to solve marital problems and intricacies of being a Libra.

Jeffrey Rosenthal, Professor of Statistics, was born on Friday the 13th. He joins Randy to talk about luck, chance, Markov's chain - and no that’s not a 90's band - and play a round of rock, paper, scissors!

Beth Coleman, Associate Professor of Data & Cities joins Randy to dive into “smarter cities” and what a more human-centered city could be.

Edward Jones-Imhotep, is a historian of the social and cultural life of machines. He and Randy talk tech, Black androids, social order, and slow disasters.

Randy Boyagoda and Clémentine Van Effenterre dive deep into economic policies and protests, privilege and class divisions, and the new shape of work across the globe.

Randy meets Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández at his OISE office for the first time since the pandemic, as they talk about whether schools have changed for the worse (or the better) since March 2020.

Maydianne Andrade is a Jamaican-born Canadian ecologist and (UTSC) professor known for her work on the mating habits of a variety of widow spiders. During the pandemic, she hosted The New Normal, a podcast about our steps into the unknown and how we as a community are getting through it. She pursues research, teaching, service, and public engagement in a variety of ways, including as a Canada Research Chair and as president of the Canadian Black Scientist Network. And we ask – what now? https://blackscientists.ca/about-us/#mission https://www.maydianne.com/

A podcast about the post pandemic world: how we live together, work together, recover, thrive, teardown, and rebuild. What has changed? Are we ready for the next challenges? Climate change, inequality, identity, housing, healthcare, supply chain, technology, community. Season one host - author and professor Randy Boyagoda – explores our city and ideas, talking with members of the U of T community and its neighbors about this brand-new world.

For University of Toronto students Gigi Hoi and Alfonso Ralph Mendoza Manalo, one of the first steps in dealing with anti-Asian racism is having difficult, honest conversations. “Having a space where people can feel safe and share … whatever it is that they're going through,” is crucial says Hoi, a PhD candidate in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science. Hoi and Manalo are guests on “Scapegoat,” a special two-part episode of The New Normal podcast hosted by Maydianne Andrade. In the episode’s first instalment, Andrade, a professor at U of T Scarborough and Canada Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology, spoke with Associate Professor Diana Fu and Associate Professor Jooyoung Lee about the history of anti-Asian racism and its devastating impacts. Being able to have a candid conversation about racism is vital whether “you've been on the receiving end of aggressions or you were a bystander and regret that you didn't do anything or you suddenly realize that you have unintentionally caused harm,” Hoi says. “I think it's so important as a first step towards fighting anti-Black, anti-Indigenous and anti-Asian racism.”

Anti-Asian racism and violence in North America have been called a “shadow pandemic” – one that has intensified over the past year and builds on a long history of discrimination. How, then, can we stop it? “One of the things that I've been trying to promote in the aftermath of the shootings in Georgia is the power that allies and bystanders have,” says Jooyoung Lee, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. “If you're a witness to harassment in public, just speaking up, just doing something … can have significant effects.” Lee is one of two guests in “Scapegoat,” a special two-part episode of The New Normal podcast hosted by Maydianne Andrade. The second guest is Diana Fu, an associate professor of political science at U of T Scarborough and an expert on U.S.-China relations. “Anti-Asian racism during the pandemic has been called a shadow pandemic and I think that term is very, very powerful,” says Fu. “It's not just that Asians are experiencing the pandemic like everybody else, but, on top of that, we are being beaten, being yelled at, being spit at. All of those things are being experienced on top of experiencing the virus. “And it's also not a recent problem.” Together, Fu, Lee and Andrade, a professor at U of T Scarborough and Canada Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology, explore the history of anti-Asian racism and its devastating impacts. “Do you know what it feels like to have others act like you have less value than other humans? In Canada, we call it being racialized,” Andrade says. “How do we find solutions? How can we be agents of change?” The New Normal is created in collaboration with a University of Toronto Communications team led by Lisa Lightbourn. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify or listen on SoundCloud. You can also find it on Apple or listen on Google.

For some, it was the last time they remember hugging a friend or a colleague, the last time they were with a class, in a crowd or with a group, the last time they took public transit without thinking about risk. In episode 18 of The New Normal podcast, University of Toronto students, alumni and faculty talk with host Maydianne Andrade about the moment they realized COVID-19 had changed their world – and what they’re most looking forward to when the pandemic ends. “On Friday, March 13th of 2020, I was working in the emergency department and we were overflowing with people – mostly travellers returning and needing or wanting to get tested for COVID,” recalls Erin Bearss, a professor in U of T’s department of family and community medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and a staff physician in family health medicine and emergency medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. “I recruited some of my residents to come and help with the swabbing and the overflow, which then led to subsequently the development of a COVID assessment center at Mount Sinai, which has continued to run over the past year.” Recent grad Isheeta Chakrabarti was in Robarts Library. “I was streaming the basketball game,” Chakrabarti recalls. “And suddenly we got a notification saying one of the players had caught COVID.” Andrade, a professor at U of T Scarborough and Canada Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology, describes life one year later as one in which “hope and longing” are intertwined. What, she asks, are people most looking forward to in the future? “Post-pandemic, I'm most looking forward to just being able to see and hug my grandparents, family and close friends again,” says undergraduate student Abhay Singh Sachal. “The thing I'm most looking forward to is going back home to Alberta and hugging my whole family as soon as I can,” says second-year internal medicine resident Nikita-Kiran Singh. For Professor Joseph Wong, interim vice-president, international, visiting with family also tops the list – but “second thing is, I can't wait to be at a Toronto Raptors game again in the Scotiabank Arena and to be in that live audience and just going crazy.” The New Normal is created in collaboration with a University of Toronto Communications team led by Lisa Lightbourn. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify or listen on SoundCloud. You can also find it on Apple or listen on Google.

One year into the global pandemic, with vaccines on the horizon, The New Normal podcast explores how far we’ve come – by looking back at where we started. In episode 17, host Maydianne Andrade, a professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough and Canada Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology, revisits the debut episode of the podcast, which was recorded shortly after the pandemic abruptly changed our lives. “No one was talking to each other,” Andrade observes. “It was almost like we were afraid that conversation would spread the virus. It was almost like we didn't know what to do or say in this strange new world.” The New Normal is created in collaboration with a University of Toronto Communications team led by Lisa Lightbourn. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify or listen on SoundCloud. You can also find it on Apple or listen on Google.

Did the printing press transform the world and lead to freedom of information – or is that a myth promoted by white, Western society? In episode 16 of her podcast, The New Normal, Professor Maydianne Andrade explores the origin stories of societies and nations with Alexandra Gillespie, a professor of English and vice-president and principal of the University of Toronto Mississauga. “Societies and nations have origin stories. Their histories are used to build justification for present-day structures,” says Andrade, Canada Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology. “But what if those stories are myths?” Western Europe’s development of printing technology needs to be viewed alongside “belligerent, violent colonialism and the enslavement of African peoples in particular – and the way that those two things lead to an extraction of wealth from the whole globe to Western Europe,” Gillespie says. “And what that means is that Western Europe gets to tell its story about printing. Not just tell its story about printing, but actually it gets to take its technology of printing and spread it around the whole world.” The result is a “kind of myth of enlightenment, of progress, of Western triumph.” But was it Western technology and inventions that gave its societies’ power – or, as Gillespie asks, “Was it the wealth that we were extracting from other parts of the world that actually gave us this power?” The episode is the latest in a series of instalments that feature Andrade in conversation with university leaders. In episode 14, she interviewed Professor Wisdom Tettey, vice-president and principal of U of T Scarborough. In episode 15, she spoke with U of T President Meric Gertler. The New Normal is created in collaboration with a University of Toronto Communications team led by Lisa Lightbourn. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify or listen on SoundCloud. You can also find it on Apple or listen on Google.

COVID-19 has disrupted and changed our lives – and our ideas about how we want to live. When the pandemic ends, what changes will we want to keep? What kind of cities will we build? In episode 15 of her podcast, The New Normal, Professor Maydianne Andrade explores these and other questions with Professor Meric Gertler, president of the University of Toronto. “We are used to thinking of cities as static, solid entities and yet they aren't,” says Andrade, Canada Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology. “They contract, they grow and they evolve.” A professor of geography and planning and a renowned expert on cities, President Gertler notes the pandemic has sparked some innovations that improve the quality of life – from the appropriation of car lanes for bicycles to adding express buses in neighbourhoods where people must travel to work every day. “The quality and the frequency of public transit service [in those communities] was just way below standard and was forcing people to get onto overcrowded buses, which imperiled their health,” President Gertler says. “We've seen the rollout of these kinds of pretty low-tech innovations that have challenged the status quo really quickly.” Those are the kinds of changes “we’ll want to hang on to,” President Gertler says. But the pandemic has also “accelerated and accentuated” income inequality and the vulnerability of racialized communities and neighbourhoods, he says. How then, Andrade asks, “do we solve the entrenched challenges of equity in our city?” “We have a role to play in documenting these inequalities, these trends, analyzing them, understanding them and helping policymakers and the lay public understand the existence of these problems and their roots, but also to help devise policy tools to address these challenges,” President Gertler says. The episode is the latest in a series of instalments that feature Andrade in conversation with university leaders. In episode 14, she interviewed Professor Wisdom Tettey, vice-president and principal of U of T Scarborough. In episode 16, she will speak with Professor Alexandra Gillespie, vice-president and principal of U of T Mississauga. The New Normal is created in collaboration with a University of Toronto Communications team led by Lisa Lightbourn. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify or listen on SoundCloud. You can also find it on Apple or listen on Google.

What does a more inclusive society look like – and what are the responsibilities we hold as citizens when it comes to building one? In the latest episode of her podcast, The New Normal, Professor Maydianne Andrade explores these and other questions with Professor Wisdom Tettey, vice-president and principal of the University of Toronto Scarborough. It’s the first in a series of episodes that will feature Andrade in conversation with university leaders. Upcoming instalments include a conversation with President Meric Gertler and a conversation with Professor Alexandra Gillespie, vice-president and principal of U of T Mississauga. “The pandemic has shown us how interconnected we are,” says Andrade, Canada Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology. But can that offset “the lasting effects of Trumpism, the laying bare of selfishness?” For Tettey, a political scientist and leading researcher on African diaspora, politics and media, a crucial first step is recognizing inequities in our society and confronting difficult truths about their causes. Only then can we talk about “how to heal by making one another better,” he says. “Those are conversations that are sometimes uncomfortable, but are necessary.” For example, Tettey says the phrase “that’s not who we are” has dominated recent conversations around white supremacy and fear. “It actually is who we are,” Tettey says. “This is fundamental to who we are. It goes to my point about recognition as a fundamental prerequisite for making the changes that are necessary.” To build a more inclusive society, he says, we must “have the humility to challenge ourselves and to be willing to let go of things that have no basis,” so that we can learn and grow. “It takes all of us doing our part and continuing to challenge ourselves, to learn, to reach out, to get into spaces that we're not comfortable with.” The New Normal is created in collaboration with a University of Toronto Communications team led by Lisa Lightbourn. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify or listen on SoundCloud. You can also find it on Apple or listen on Google.