Symposium: AI and Society

Over the past decade, concerns about the societal risks posed by AI systems have been steadily growing. AI systems have already been known to reinforce discriminatory biases, violate privacy, and manipulate public discourse. A wealth of technical work has been produced to assess and mitigate those risks, yet it is often based on simplistic assumptions of the role that AI plays in the real world. 

The goal of this symposium is to tighten the link between technical viewpoints on the societal risks of AI and those from industry, law and policy. Hence, top experts in Belgium representing these diverse viewpoints, from within academia and without, will present their work and the challenges they face in addressing the societal risks of AI. Afterwards, they will participate in a panel discussion.

The invited speakers are:

• Toon Calders (University of Antwerp)

• Jelle Hoedemaekers (Agoria)

• David Martens (University of Antwerp)

• Felicity Reddel (The Future Society)

• Katrien Verbert (KU Leuven)

Following the symposium, Maarten Buyl will hold his public PhD defense on the topic of AI fairness. His thesis proposes technical tools to mitigate algorithmic bias and discusses the limitations of technical tools in truly achieving fair decision processes.  The presentation is aimed at a non-expert audience.

A detailed programme can be found here. 

Please note that registration is mandatory.

Organized by 

Maarten Buyl, MaryBeth Defrance and Tijl De Bie 

at Ghent University.

Supported by

the Vlaamse AI Academie (VAIA)

the Flanders AI Research Program (FAIR)