AI4Society Dialogues

By AI4Society

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 bee... more

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FAQs about AI4Society Dialogues:

How many episodes does AI4Society Dialogues have?

The podcast currently has 42 episodes available.

AI4Society Dialogues episodes:

March 07, 2022 Episode Ten: Marilène Oliver: Knowing our virtual selves
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.
...more
39min
February 22, 2022 Episode Nine: Padma Kaul: Epidemiological approaches in women's health data
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.
...more
40min
February 07, 2022 Episode Eight: Bo Cao: Machine learning and mental health
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.
...more
37min
January 24, 2022 Episode Seven: Adriana Ríos Rincón: Social robots and assistive technologies
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.
...more
51min
January 24, 2022 AI4Society Dialogues, S2E7 - Social robots and assistive technologies
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.
...more
51min
January 10, 2022 Episode Six: Jacob Jaremko: Envisioning medical scan data as the 21st century stethoscope
A stethoscope is a functional device, used to examine a patient...but it’s also become an enduring symbol for the use of technology in patient care. Yet...when it comes to advances in technology - what might a new, 21st century stethoscope look like? Dr. Jacob Jaremko believes that with AI enabled technology, we can transform medical imaging at the point of care.  We talk about his thoughts on artificial intelligence in the context of medicine, his journey from an undergrad civil engineer to medical student to the world of artificial neural networks, what he’s learned in becoming an entrepreneur and thoughts on healthcare data, AI and ethics.

“Diversity is absolutely crucial to innovation. The way to produce innovation most reliably and effectively is to take smart people from different backgrounds and put them together in a room to solve a problem...everyone sees it differently...and new ideas come out of that. ” - Jacob Jaremko
Dr. Jacob Jaremko is a pediatric musculoskeletal radiologist, who is an Associate Professor and AHS Endowed Chair in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Alberta. He’s also a Canada AI Chair and CIFAR fellow. Dr. Jaremko has been working with artificial intelligence since 1999, completing his PhD thesis in biomedical engineering. More recently, he co-founded MEDO, one of Alberta’s most promising health tech startups.
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.
...more
36min
January 10, 2022 AI4Society Dialogues, S2E6 - Envisioning medical scan data as the 21st century stethoscope
A stethoscope is a functional device, used to examine a patient...but it’s also become an enduring symbol for the use of technology in patient care. Yet...when it comes to advances in technology - what might a new, 21st century stethoscope look like? Dr. Jacob Jaremko believes that with AI enabled technology, we can transform medical imaging at the point of care.  We talk about his thoughts on artificial intelligence in the context of medicine, his journey from an undergrad civil engineer to medical student to the world of artificial neural networks, what he’s learned in becoming an entrepreneur and thoughts on healthcare data, AI and ethics.
“Diversity is absolutely crucial to innovation. The way to produce innovation most reliably and effectively is to take smart people from different backgrounds and put them together in a room to solve a problem...everyone sees it differently...and new ideas come out of that. ” - Jacob Jaremko
Dr. Jacob Jaremko is a pediatric musculoskeletal radiologist, who is an Associate Professor and AHS Endowed Chair in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Alberta. He’s also a Canada AI Chair and CIFAR fellow. Dr. Jaremko has been working with artificial intelligence since 1999, completing his PhD thesis in biomedical engineering. More recently, he co-founded MEDO, one of Alberta’s most promising health tech startups.
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.
...more
36min
January 07, 2022 AI4Society Dialogues, S2E4 - Predicting cancer to drive early interventions
What if we had better ways to predict cancer and a tailored plan to intervene early in the process? Dr. Adam Kinnaird is conducting leading edge research in the area of prostate cancer, which affects 1 in 7 men in Canada throughout their life. We talk about his research into early interventions in cancer, why prostate cancer is so hard to diagnose, using AI/ML techniques in precision diagnostics, surgical robots, interdisciplinary research collaboration and why he’s excited about the future of precision medicine.
“Prostate cancer is a spectrum, [from low to high risk]...my particular research looks at the patient population for low risk prostate cancer...and doing active surveillance. We’re trying to better risk stratify men...we are using advanced imaging techniques, MRI and micro-ultrasound ...as well as next generation genetic sequencing... We’re trying to come up with a composite risk score at the individual patient level.” - Adam Kinnaird
Dr. Adam Kinnaird is Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, surgery department, at the University of Alberta. He is a urological surgeon and graduated as a Vanier Scholar with the Governor General’s Gold Medal at the University of Alberta. Dr. Kinnaird is an award-winning researcher and recently completed an international fellowship at UCLA.
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.
...more
36min
January 07, 2022 AI4Society Dialogues, S2E3 - Data, Virtual Care and Precision Health
Advances in digital innovation, including artificial intelligence, are rapidly changing the face of both healthcare research and the delivery of care. In his work as a clinician, professor and researcher, Dr. Daniel Baumgart is working to advance precision medicine on all of these fronts. We talk about his early interest in computers, why he chose to pursue an MBA in addition to his medical background, his research on Crohn’s disease and his recent work on virtual care, why Alberta can play a leading role in digital health innovation, and being a clinician during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Healthcare is delivered in three classical settings – an outpatient clinic, the emergency room and the hospital. There are huge gaps between those encounters….a lot of information from patients (data, feedback) is lost because they only meet us in these classic encounters. In the future…we will be going to (the patient)…they will participate more in their healthcare experience. Which will be part of the driver of digital health and will produce the data that artificial intelligence needs to shine.” - Daniel Baumgart
Dr. Daniel Baumgart is the Director of the Division of Gastroenterology in the Department of Medicine, at the University of Alberta. Dr. Baumgart holds an MD, PhD and an MBA, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He is a founding member of the University of Alberta Precision Health signature area and leads research with the Alberta Precision Health Innovation, Research and Technology Ecosystem. His list of accolades, funding and partnerships are numerous. He has been the principal investigator on over 200 multinational clinical trials. Recent research areas include projects on AI-enabled decision support systems, digital health and virtual care.
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.
...more
50min
December 06, 2021 Episode Five: Nilanjan Ray: Advances in computer vision supporting diabetes research
Computer Vision is a field within artificial intelligence that is having significant impacts in medicine. Automated analysis of medical scan images can provide rich sources of insight and machine learning techniques to process this data open up a realm of possibilities for both researchers and clinicians. Dr. Nilanjan Ray is a leading researcher in computer vision, image analysis and visual recognition with deep learning. His current focus includes the application of cutting edge computer vision techniques to advance research in diabetes treatment. We talk about how he “accidentally” landed in this field, how computer vision works, the challenges of executing decision making using AI, how he is using generative adversarial networks to advance medical research (not for deep fakes!) and the role of technology in democratizing healthcare.
“In order to make that kind of (diabetes) treatment available...there is almost no choice but to use AI to bring the costs down to scale up (delivery)” – Nilanjan Ray
Dr. Nilanjan Ray is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Alberta. His research is in computer vision, image analysis and visual recognition with deep learning. His work includes medical imaging and general computer vision applications including classification, recognition, semantic segmentation, object tracking, image registration and motion detection. Dr. Ray has served as General Co-chair for AI/GI/CRV conference in 2017, Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (2013-2017) and IET Image Processing (2016-), reviewer for NSERC DG and CRD grants.

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.
...more
43min

FAQs about AI4Society Dialogues:

How many episodes does AI4Society Dialogues have?

The podcast currently has 42 episodes available.