Creating an AI Strategy for SFU

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is a catchall term for technology tools that had been previously thought to require human intelligence. Today, AI technology can recognize faces, understand speech, write sentences, answer questions, create pictures and even drive cars!

As the AI revolution charges on, SFU needs to determine how we can responsibly leverage and use AI for the greater good of education, research, and society.

To begin this work, an AI strategy committee was formed this summer to look at how the university can explore the opportunities and impacts of AI at SFU in four key areas: Learning and Teaching, Research, Operations/Administration and External Engagement.

More information will be shared about each of these groups this fall, as students, faculty and staff will be invited to join townhalls or other events to explore and discuss the opportunities and challenges surrounding AI and how best to harness this technology for the benefit of all.

The first event scheduled as part of the AI strategy committee is the September 25 Townhall on Artificial Intelligence in Learning and Teaching. For more information go to the event page.

Dugan O’Neil, Vice President of Research & Innovation is the chair of this committee, with leads in each of the four areas:

• Learning and Teaching: Paul Kingsbury, Associate Vice President, Learning-Teaching, pro tem
• Research: Steve DiPaola, Professor, School of Interactive Arts & Technology and Parmit Chilana, Associate Professor, School of Computing Science and Co-director Visual and Interactive Computing Institute (VINCI)
• Operations/Administration: Brian Stewart, Chief Information Officer, IT Services
• Partnerships/External Engagement: Seychelle Cushing, Executive Director, SFU’s Partnerships Hub and Aftab Erfan, Executive Director of the SFU Centre for Dialogue

The committee also includes Mark Jordan representing the library and Fred Popwich representing the Big Data Hub.

The guiding principles for embarking on this work will be:

• AI-based tools are just that - tools. Learning how to use these new tools to be a leading research university, advancing an inclusive and sustainable future, should be our priority.
• Learning how to use AI-based tools requires understanding how these tools pose challenges, opportunities, and questions.
• AI-based tools are changing (and improving) rapidly. An agile and coordinated approach is needed to effectively integrate these tools into our work.
• There are risks associated (e.g., academic integrity, privacy and security, intellectual property rights, reliability, inequities). Understanding and using the tools ourselves will help us manage those risks.

It will also be a priority to keep these four areas connected to the university’s What Next strategy and the Academic plan to ensure that both knowledge-sharing and cost-sharing occurs, in alignment with the university’s priorities.

Stay tuned for further updates from each of the groups. As work progresses, information and updates will be available here.