AI Adoption, Policy, and Governance

This executive course offers multiple modes of learning that will allow you to get up-to-speed quickly on how AI is set to radically transform business, government, and society.  This includes:

• 45-minute modules comprised of short presentations by leading experts in the field and faculty-guided peer-led discussions.
• Curated readings that will allow you to dig deeper into specific topics of interest.
• Action learning thought-starters that will apply the 3R model to your organization or one with which you are familiar.
  

Dr. Joël Blit is a professor of economics, chair of the Council on Innovation Policy at the University of Waterloo, and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). His main research interests are in the economics of innovation and innovation policy. He studies, among other things, AI, economics and the future of work, the diffusion of disruptive technologies and their impact on productivity and jobs, as well as the effect of that intellectual property rights (patents) have on innovation. Dr. Blit’s most recent work, examining how COVID-19 has transformed the economy through automation and reallocation, has been featured in numerous media outlets including The Economist, The Globe and Mail, and CBC. 

He has also received numerous research grants from agencies such as SSHRC, NBER, CIBER, INET, CIGI, the AI Institute at the University of Waterloo.

Prior to joining Waterloo, Dr. Blit was an assistant professor of economics and international affairs at the George Washington University. He has also been a business consultant to financial services firms in Asia, Australia, and North America, which has included formulating the strategy for a $100M USD startup. He holds a BASc Engineering Science (Toronto), MASc Computer Engineering (Waterloo), MBA (INSEAD), MA Economics (Western), and PhD Economics (Toronto).

Dr. Jimmy Lin is a professor and holds the David R. Cheriton Chair in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. He also serves as the co-director of the Waterloo AI Institute, which has the mission to promote cross-disciplinary research at the frontiers of artificial intelligence and its applications across the entire campus.

Dr. Lin’s area of research lies at the intersection between natural language processing and information retrieval. In addition to being one of the most cited artificial intelligence scholars in the world, he has been frequently and deeply engaged with both the private and public sectors throughout his career, including an extended sabbatical at Twitter and visiting positions at the US National Library of Medicine (NLM), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

He presently serves as the chief technology officer of Primal, a Waterloo-based AI company focused on creating meaning that computers can understand. Dr. Lin holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and is a fellow of the ACM.

Giuseppina (Pina) D’Agostino is a CIGI senior fellow and a world-renowned authority on intellectual property (IP), innovation law, and policy. She is an associate professor at Osgoode Hall Law School; vice-director of Connected Minds: Neural and Machine Systems for a Healthy Just Society; inaugural co-director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Society at York University; founder and director of the IP Innovation Clinic and the IP Law and Technology Program at Osgoode Hall Law School; editor-in-chief of Intellectual Property Journal; and founding director of IP Osgoode.

Through CIGI and Intellectual Property Ontario, D'Agostino has scaled the operational capacity of her IP innovation clinic model, to provide IP law training for law students working directly with lawyers to help clients via pro bono work. The goal is to promote innovation and entrepreneurship across Canada and the clinic has already achieved numerous start-up success stories and has undercut over $2 million in fees.

Prior to joining Osgoode, D’Agostino was selected by the Recruitment of Policy Leaders Program for the Department of Canadian Heritage and worked at the Copyright Policy Branch. She also previously practised law at a large Toronto law firm. She is a Supreme Court of Canada–cited authority and is regularly called on by foreign governments and the federal and provincial Canadian governments for advice. In 2010, she testified before Parliament’s legislative committee on Canada’s ongoing copyright reform initiatives.

Nestor Maslej is a research manager at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). In this position, he manages the AI Index and Global AI Vibrancy Tool. In developing tools that track the advancement of AI, Nestor hopes to make the AI space more accessible to policymakers, business leaders and the lay public.

Nestor’s work on AI, namely the AI Index, has been cited in newspapers across the globe including: The New York Times, Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Vox, Al Jazeera, Fortune, Forbes, San Francisco Chronicle, Politico, The Register, Der Spiegel, The Verge, IEEE Spectrum, VentureBeat, and more. Nestor’s publications have likewise informed AI policymaking worldwide, having been referenced by policymakers in countries such as the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, as well as Korea.

Nestor also speaks frequently about trends in AI, having briefed high-level US policymakers, testified in front of both the Canadian and Italian parliaments, and presented to CEOs from a plethora of industries. Nestor is also a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) where he regularly writes opinion pieces on developments in AI.