FSN Seminar – July 11

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/kdioL2InOA8

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AI: Integrity, Ethics, Geopolitics & Social Responsibility 

By

Peter K. MacKinnon

Abstract
Today, most transformations in the world are being driven by applications of information and communications technologies. Moreover, intangible things are becoming a new norm in the form of big data, advanced software and services being enabled by AI and proliferated by means of the internet with unprecedented speed and depth of penetration across the globe. Such intangibles and their enabling technologies raise the bar with their power and range of uses leading to calls for responsible development and use of AI-enabled systems, particularly in critical infrastructure and mission critical systems. Why? Because AI is a powerful dual use technology.

The emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) is supercharging the ability of scientists and engineers to develop ever more powerful technologies. This is leading to further advancement of AI itself and reshaping the world in the process, especially AI’s implications to geopolitics and social responsibility, such as its role in helping to preserve democracy against a rising tide of autocratic states, and non-state actors such as criminals and terrorists and even lone wolves. GAI is the first general purpose technology in the world that can manipulate the human mind for good or bad.

My intent in this talk is to raise awareness and to appreciate and understand the themes in the title of this webinar, especially as they relate to creating and operating AI technologies for the benefit of humanity. Therefore, in this talk I will look at artificial intelligence through the lenses of integrity and ethics, geopolitics, and social responsibility.

Biography
Today, Peter is a management consultant and academic. He has a professional background built on a wide range of experiences derived from holding positions as a scientist, business manager, entrepreneur, bureaucrat, executive, diplomat, international management advisor and academic. His experiences span the world. He has worked with clients on every continent and a number of island nations.

His consultancy practice is global in scope and focuses on strategic management issues associated with government policies and programs, business formation, corporate development and change management, often with an underlying current related to advanced information and communications technologies. One of his academic areas of interest is the interface between engineering and business; in particular the roles played by disruptive technologies and disruptive business models within organisations and political economy more generally. He also is involved in workforce and supply chain development for emerging strategic technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum and post quantum computing, and SMRs – small modular reactors.

Peter writes regularly on various themes in Artificial Intelligence for policy oriented publications. He is the founding Managing Partner of Synergy Technology Management, also based in Ottawa with a world wide practice.

He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) – USA Artificial Intelligence Systems Policy Committee; Chair of the Foresight Synergy Network, a professional futures group, sponsored by the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa; serves as a Senior Research
Associate in the Faculty of Engineering at uOttawa, and blogs on Artificial Intelligence for the Institute for Science Society and Policy at uOttawa. He is also a Senior Associate of Global Advantage Consulting Group based in Ottawa, Canada.