Last week, I had the privilege of attending a two-day workshop at the United Nations in New York. Co-organized by the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), with support from NYU Tandon School of Engineering, we convened an international group of professors, graduate students, diplomats and UN and SIPRI policy makers to discuss how we can promote the teaching of responsible and ethical AI practices, as well as move towards safer AI in defense applications.

I came away very inspired and excited about the possibilities in this area, as well as having learned a lot about robotics and the applications of AI towards autonomous vehicles and devices. First, while LLMs do grab a lot of attention, the applications of AI go far beyond the current generation of LLMs. The intersection of robotics and machine learning will be key to many interesting developments in the future. Second, it is important that responsible and ethical development of technologies be integrated into STEM educational programs. One amazing we to do this that we’ve developed here at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society is our Embedded Ethics in Engineering Initiative (E3I), which has been deployed in the Department of Computer Science here at U of T. Finally, it is critically important that we achieve coordination for these efforts internationally, something we hope the UN can help us achieve (and something many at the UN also feel is very important).

I look forward to continuing collaborations with the group going forward!