Ron Baecker, an internationally recognized innovator, author, speaker, teacher and mentor, will lead us through a compelling discussion of the digital dreams that have come true, their often unintended side effects (nightmares), and what must be done to counteract the nightmares.
ABSTRACT: For eighty years, digital technology visionaries have imagined and created systems to support human knowledge, learning, creativity, medicine, health, communications, community, commerce, power, and convenience. Yet these advances have been subverted by ill-advised uses and by bad actors creating hate speech, disinformation, job loss and industry disruption, monopolistic abuse of market dominance, helplessness, mental distress, injustice, loss of privacy, and poor security and safety.
These nightmares seem overwhelming, but there is much that we can do, much that we must do.
As digital technology professionals, we can focus on computer science applications in the service of good. We can anticipate how our creations may be subverted by poor design or bad actors and adjust our plans accordingly. Throughout our careers, we can be guided by our conscience and by ethics. Looking outwards, we can educate people to better understand digital technologies and their uses and misuses. We can aid citizens seeking to avoid adverse consequences of tech deployment. As professionals, we can seek systems and standards of effective education and accountability. Finally, we can work with governments to ensure appropriate legislation and enforcement.
I will pay particular attention to artificial intelligence, a technology of great potential for human betterment that may be negated by harms that arise when it is deployed before it is reliable and safe.
SPEAKER: An internationally recognized innovator, author, speaker, teacher, and mentor, Ron Baecker is Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he co-founded the Dynamic Graphics Project (DGP) and founded the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) and the Technologies for Aging Gracefully lab (TAGlab). Every fall, he now teaches Computers and Society at Columbia University.
He has been named one of the 60 Pioneers of Computer Graphics by ACM SIGGRAPH, has been elected to the CHI (Computers and Human Interaction) Academy by ACM SIGCHI, has been named an ACM Fellow, and has been given a Canadian Digital Media Pioneer Award. He received the Social Impact Award at ACM CHI2020 and is an ACM Distinguished Speaker for 2022-5. He is also the founder of 5 software firms, and the organizer of the resource hub computers-society.org.
His four most recent books (see ronbaecker.com), are Computers and Society: Modern Perspectives (2019, Oxford University Press), The Covid-19 Solutions Guide: Health, Wealth, Technology, and the Human Spirit (2020, 2nd Edition), Ethical Tech Startup Guide (2023, Springer Nature). and Digital Dreams Have Become Nightmares: What We Must Do (2024, 2nd Edition, ACM Press).