Who's Afraid of AI?

2025 marks an inflection point in our current technological environment, with seismic shifts driven by AI innovation. Who’s Afraid of AI? offers an inquiry into the social, ethical, and creative implications of AI, and directions for our creative and collective imaginings of the futures of intelligence. The complexity of our immediate futures demands an interdisciplinary dialogue, with perspectives from artists, AI researchers, and humanities scholars.

The two-day conference of panels and debates will be held at the University of Toronto’s University College and will culminate in a city-wide, barrier-breaking week of AI-themed and AI-powered art installations, theater, and music. Who’s Afraid of AI? reflects Canada’s central role in developing AI technologies and brings to bear the central Canadian value of embracing and engaging a diverse range of perspectives through our constructive dialogue on the challenges and possibilities of our future with AI.

This event is designed to encourage a vigorous interdisciplinary dialogue among a diverse group of experts in technology, the humanities, and the arts. Speakers will be invited to respond to core questions about AI, its capabilities, possibilities and dangers, bringing their unique research, creation, scholarship and experience to the discussion. They will then dialogue with the other speakers on the panel, enabling an interdisciplinary conversation on the topic. These topics include the implications of AI in the contexts of theories of mind and embodiment, its influence on our understanding of creation, innovation, and discovery, its ability to recognize diversity and include different perspectives, and its transformation of our artistic, political, cultural and everyday practice.

Sponsored by BMO Lab, University College, TUX (tux-hci.org), SSHRC, Jackman Humanities Institute, CIFAR, Hart House, Department of Psychology, Temerty Centre for AI Research and Education in Medicine, Centre for Comparative Literature, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Information, Hart House Theatre, Department of Computer Science, ICCIT, Department of English, Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures, Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology.

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Host or Publisher Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto