The dialogue on AI is open!

Because we are only the beginning of a digital, automation and AI revolution that is transforming several jobs and social relationships, for instance, between patients and their doctors or students and their teachers. These changes, which are already affecting many people, lead us to ask ourselves how to ensure that these technologies are accessible and beneficial to all. In order to best organize the transformations brought about by AI—which are permanent in some fields, such as medicine—it is important to establish an open dialogue with the public. It is up to each individual to say whether this type of application will change his or her life for the better or, conversely, impose new constraints.

Absolutely. Our working group is primarily focused on digital literacy and how to increase the public's knowledge of AI. The first phase involved conducting a consultation by survey to gain insight into the social perception of AI. In this second phase, our aim is to discover how the Canadian population perceives value conflicts, for example between security and privacy, health and data anonymization. These societal, ethical and political issues will be discussed in the Open Dialogue citizen workshops that seek to better understand public perceptions and expectations of AI. In some ways, UdeM paved the way for these inclusive discussions with the Montreal Declaration for a Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence which was initiated in 2017.

Each "event" conducted across the country will be held on Zoom, with a maximum of 100 people, so register today as space is limited! Participants will first receive a deliberation guide and a program schedule to help them prepare for the discussions. Over the course of the 2.5-hour workshop, participants will be divided into Zoom breakout rooms in groups of 8 to 10 people to critically reflect on, and discuss, societal issues from a use case that could be related to health, transportation, education, insurance, etc. They will then be asked to formulate concrete responses with recommendations for mediating value conflicts. Specific workshops will be dedicated to Indigenous people with respect to deliberative practices unique to their culture, as well as to youth aged 13 to 17. Our goal is to have over 1000 people in Canada participate in these exchanges.

The feedback collected from these workshops will inform recommendations for the Government of Canada so that it can adjust its AI outreach strategy and "map" the factors that would make one application likely to be accepted, and another likely to be rejected. The extent of AI’s deployment depends on the public’s acceptance and trust of these technologies.