Absolutely Interdisciplinary brings researchers together with a commitment to building new, interdisciplinary approaches to advance our understanding of how to meet the challenge of ensuring AI and other powerful technologies promote human well-being. This year, Absolutely Interdisciplinary takes place virtually over three days, with a one-day graduate workshop preceding the main conference, four scheduled sessions across two days in the main conference, and opportunities for interaction and socialization in between. 

This year, Absolutely Interdisciplinary takes place under the theme of “Human and Machine Normativity: New Connections.” 

One of the key challenges in AI ethics is the alignment problem—ensuring technologies are aligned with our values and serve the common good. Simultaneously, cutting-edge research in the humanities and social sciences is shedding light on the complexity of our shared systems of values and norms and how they evolve, are maintained, and shape our behaviour. Often AI researchers and those working on the nature of norms in other disciplines are approaching the same problem from different angles. This conference will identify and bring into dialogue these researchers and forge new interdisciplinary connections to shed light on these important questions.

Participants will contribute to and learn about emerging areas of research and new questions to explore. Each session will pair researchers from different disciplines to address a common question, and then facilitate a group discussion. By identifying people working on similar questions from different perspectives, we will foster conversations that develop the interdisciplinary approaches and research questions needed to understand how AI can be made to align with the full range of diverse human normative systems.

Guest speakers:

Jeff Clune, research team leader at OpenAI, and associate professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia. 

Vincent Conitzer, Kimberly J. Jenkins Distinguished University Professor of New Technologies and professor of computer science, economics, and  philosophy at Duke University. 

Deborah Gordon, professor of biology at Stanford University. 

Mortiz Hardt, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Joel Z. Leibo, research scientist at DeepMind and research affiliate with the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. 

Sarah Mathew, associate professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. 

Deirdre Mulligan, professor in the School of Information at UC Berkeley. 

Johanna Thoma, associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. 

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/absolutely-interdisciplinary-tickets-145537439399