As advances are made in artificial intelligence, questions are being raised about how we should relate to AI, especially when it’s embodied intelligence. In other words - how will we relate to robots? Dr. Adriana Ríos Rincón is a researcher who uses robots in her work with children. We talk about her thoughts on artificial intelligence, the importance of play in her research (and what she does for fun), how AI intersects with assistive technologies and her work to democratize access to these technologies and the role of robots in care.
 
“For most people technology makes things easier, for people with disabilities technology makes things possible….I’m interested in developing new low cost and high quality assistive technologies.” - Adriana Ríos Rincón

Dr. Adriana Ríos Rincón is Assistant Professor, Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Alberta. Her current research is devoted to investigating the use of assistive technologies to assess and promote cognitive skills and engagement in play in individuals with disabilities, mainly those with motor and cognitive impairment including those living with dementia.She is also interested in exploring the use of information and communication technologies and artificial intelligence to support decisions about transitions across the continuum of care in older adults and individuals with disabilities.
 
Season two of AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between two signature research areas at the University of Alberta, AI4Society and Precision Health.

Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AI
Technical Producer: Corey Stroeder
Special thanks to Kaly Vittala for research and production support.
Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain

Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4Society
Dr. Lawrence Richer, Vice Dean, Research, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
Copyright 2021 University of Alberta. All rights reserved.

Episode Seven: Adriana Ríos Rincón: Social robots and assistive technologies

According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, in any given year, 1 in 5 people in Canada will personally experience a mental health problem or illness and by age 40, about 50% of the population will have or have had a mental illness. How might advances in precision health change how we address mental health problems? Dr. Bo “Cloud” Cao research interests include developing tools to enable personalized diagnosis and treatment for mental disorders, brain development and aging as well as neuromodulation and neurofeedback. We talk about the brain and the new, quantitative approaches to psychiatry made possible because of big data, the tools he’s developing to support the personalization of mental health treatments, the ethical use of data, how he addresses missing or lack of data in underrepresented populations and the importance of being part of an interdisciplinary team in order to develop real world solutions.

“Computational psychiatry...involves the use of more and more data from all modalities - imaging, genetics, medical records...all of this allow us to apply machine learning to the field of psychiatry. We can now investigate problems in new ways - it’s no longer just about doing one clinical trial.” -  Bo “Cloud” Cao

Dr. Bo Cao is an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair (CRC; Tier 2) in Computational Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta (UAlberta). Trained in mathematics (BSc), psychology (MSc), computational neuroscience (PhD), neuroimaging and psychiatry (postdoc), Dr. Cao has a strong passion for understanding the fundamental mechanisms of how the brain works and how to cure the brain when the mechanisms are disturbed. Dr. Cao's main research interests are computational psychiatry and precision medicine in mental health, brain development  and aging, general aging, and neuromodulation and neurofeedback.
Season two of AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between two signature research areas at the University of Alberta, AI4Society and Precision Health.

Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AI
Technical Producer: Corey Stroeder
Special thanks to Kaly Vittala for research and production support.
Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain

Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4Society
Dr. Lawrence Richer, Vice Dean, Research, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
Copyright 2021 University of Alberta. All rights reserved.

Episode Eight: Bo Cao: Machine learning and mental health

Women are disproportionately affected by heart failure after heart attacks and underrepresented in clinical trials. This lack of medical data about women hinders our ability to really understand the impacts some medications have on women. Dr. Padma Kaul is working to change this.  We talk about her eclectic background that led to her work in epidemiology, why she’s passionate about women’s health and “getting the data”, her personal connection to her research focus on cardiovascular diseases, underrepresented groups in epidemiological studies and the 
“Fewer women tend to be enrolled in clinical trials...my colleagues and I are trying to increase enrollment for women….the underrepresentation of women in general cardiology trials is a limitation. There’s been some research to suggest that because cardiology has been a male dominated field, maybe male physicians are more likely to enroll male patients….now everyone is aware that is something that needs to be fixed.”  - Padma Kaul
Dr. Padma Kaul is an epidemiologist and a Professor in the Department of Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta. She is also co-director of the Canadian VIGOUR Centre, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Sex and Gender Science Chair in Diabetes and the Heart and Stroke Research in Cardiovascular research. 

Season two of AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between two signature research areas at the University of Alberta, AI4Society and Precision Health.

Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AI
Technical Producer: Corey Stroeder
Special thanks to Kaly Vittala for research and production support.
Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain

Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4Society
Dr. Lawrence Richer, Vice Dean, Research, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
Copyright 2021 University of Alberta. All rights reserved.

Episode Nine: Padma Kaul: Epidemiological approaches in women's health data

Some artists work with clay, or paint, but Dr. Marilene Oliver works with a digitized version of the human body. Her work explores the zeros and ones that we become when WE are rendered into data. Dr. Marilene Oliver is Assistant Professor of Visual Art at the University of Alberta. Her work is at the crossroads of new digital technologies, traditional print, and sculpture - producing objects that bridge the virtual and the real worlds. We talk about her inspiration for using medical scan data as raw material for artistic creation, the personal connections in her work through use of her own data and that of family members, biometric data and the role of our bodies in fuelling AI, her latest project that aims to bring “life” to a body of data to train and AI system, creating an ethics guidance for artistic creators and the tension she feels in seeing the harms of our current AI reality while hoping for a better future. 
 
Find out more about Know Thyself as a Virtual Reality.

“I’ve just witnessed a really positive way that AI is changing a society (in the Faroe Islands) making it much more affluent...I see the evidence of how AI can be really positive. But in my work, I tend to be very cautious and anxious about AI. I worry that it’s a lot of control and focuses on things that mean we lose our humanity.”  - Marilène Oliver

Dr. Marilène Oliver is an assistant professor of printmaking at the University of Alberta, Canada. Dr. Oliver studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, London, UK where she obtained an MPhil with research project ‘Flesh to Pixel, Flesh to Voxel, Flesh to XYZ’. She has exhibited internationally in both private and public galleries including MassMoCA, Knoxville Museum of Art (USA) Frissarias Museum (Greece), Casino Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Fundació Sorigué (Spain) and The Glenbow Museum (Canada). Her work is held in a number of private collections around the world as well as a number of public collections such as The Wellcome Trust, Victoria and Albert Museum and Knoxville Museum of Art. In 2019 Dr. Oliver led and curated the exhibition Dyscorpia: Future Intersections of the Body and Technology and in 2020, the online exhibition Dyscorpia 2.1. She is also the host of LASERAlberta, a public series of art and science events and currently leads the research project ‘Know Thyself as a Virtual Reality’.

Season two of AI4Society Dialogues is a co-production between two signature research areas at the University of Alberta, AI4Society and Precision Health.

Host: Katrina Ingram, Founder and CEO, Ethically Aligned AI
Technical Producer: Corey Stroeder
Special thanks to Kaly Vittala for research and production support.
Theme music: “Seeing the Future” by Dexter Britain

Dr. Eleni Stroulia, Professor, Computer Science and Director, AI4Society
Dr. Lawrence Richer, Vice Dean, Research, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
Copyright 2021 University of Alberta. All rights reserved.

Episode Ten: Marilène Oliver: Knowing our virtual selves

AI4Society is one of the University of Alberta’s five Signature Research Areas and is focused on artificial intelligence and its applications.
Over the past 30 years, the University of Alberta has been consistently ranked as one of the top three institutions worldwide for AI research and is a lead player in Canada’s national AI strategy. 
Building on this recognition, AI4Society’s goal is to stimulate interdisciplinary research and teaching in this field by supporting initiatives at the University of Alberta. We also provide continuing institutional leadership by coordinating and designing innovative training programs and representing the institution in new initiatives with public, private, and international partners.

AI4Society

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