Today I gave a plenary talk on “How Safe is AI Safety?” to open a Workshop on AI and DH (Part 1) organized by the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur les humanités numériques (CRIHN) at the Université de Montréal.
In the paper I looked at how AI safety is being implemented in Canada and what is the scope of the idea. I talked about the shift from Responsible AI to AI Safety in the Canadian government’s rhetoric.
I’m trying to figure out what to call the methodology I have developed for this and other research excursions. It has elements of Foucault’s geneaology of ideas – trying to follow ideas that are obvious through the ways the ideas are structured in institutions. Or, it is an extension of Ian Hacking’s idea of historical ontology where we try to understand ideas about things through their history.