Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly integrated into society, my research program aims to discover how to build more socially sensitive AI technology. We do this by augmenting AI systems such as robots, virtual assistants, smart devices, and other agents with the ability to reflect. Here, this reflection includes learning and reasoning using self-models that include social factors, including context, trustworthiness, norms, network structure, and likely outcomes of actions. This requires internal simulations of the social systems of which the AI system is part. The impact of this will be intelligent socio-technical systems able to act collectively to intentionally create more sustainable, equitable, and efficient outcomes in shared environments. We will demonstrate this impact using simulation models of global sustainability challenges that include AI-based decision making, plus a case study on AI-supported community building for food security in Toronto.