Synergizing AI Research: Linking Diverse Expertise to Ignite Progress

Conference Focus

This conference will focus on the advantages that AI and machine learning can bring to research and innovation, whilst also critically engaging with their limitations and potential harms.

The rapid development of AI and other technologies is impacting nearly every aspect of society, commerce, state institutions, and academia.  This evolution should command the attention of interdisciplinary research and cooperative efforts to address and reflect upon the purpose and complex impacts of AI within society, the state, human nature, and so on.  

This conference seeks to facilitate and encourage collaboration across disciplines that focuses on highlighting how the impact, design, and application of AI and related technologies will affect the planet, humans and nonhumans.

It also aims to outline paths to alternative futures that prioritise the social good.

Conference Details (full schedule forthcoming)

This is a student-led conference that is primarily aimed at featuring the work of PhD and early career researchers.  We invite all academics, industry professionals, and students of all levels to attend the conference.

The conference will include a variety of presentations, including but not limited to:

• Ethics and Governance of AI
• AI & ML in Scientific Research
• Human-Machine Collaboration
• Responsible Algorithmic Science and Innovation
• AI and the Law
• AI, Creativity and the Arts
• Algorithmic Security
• AI in Fintech
• AI, Knowledge and Learning
• AI and Healthcare
• AI and Being Human

Keynote Speakers

We are honoured to have Professor Elke Schwarz and Professor Brooke Simmons as the keynote speakers for the conference.

Elke Schwarz is Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University London, UK.  She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), an MA in Conflict Studies from the War Studies Department at King’s College London (KCL) and a Bachelor’s in Business Studies from Belmont University (USA).  She has published extensively on the ethics of technology and warfare, with a specific emphasis on new and emerging military technologies, including military Artificial Intelligence (AI), autonomous weapon systems, drones and robots.

She is the author of Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies (Manchester University Press).  Elke is Vice-Chair of the International Committee of Robot Arms Control (ICRAC), an Associate with the Imperial War Museum (IWM) and an RSA Fellow.  She held a 2022/23 Fellowship at the Center for Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) and was a 2024 Leverhulme Research Fellow.

Brooke Simmons is a Professor in Astrophysics and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at Lancaster University.  She is also Deputy PI of the citizen science project ‘Galaxy Zoo’ and leads the disaster relief arm of the Zooniverse citizen science platform.

Her research focuses on galaxy evolution and the co-evolution of supermassive black holes with their host galaxies.  Prof. Simmons aims to answer complex astrophysical questions by implementing a combination of observations and theory, using some of the largest data sets astronomers now have and will have in the future.

Conference Co-ordinators:

Emily Hickman

Dylan Magill

Joe Wakley

Further information

Conference website.

Contact us at linaspgconference@qub.ac.uk

What is LINAS?

LINAS brings together doctoral scholars from a variety of different disciplines: law, computer science, social science, education, social work, history, anthropology, politics, philosophy, maths and physics to research the implications of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and massive scale data processing.

The core of our research explores emerging technologies and seeks to address the implications of massive-scale data processing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

We focus on exploring the actual operation and implications of algorithmically driven public decision-making in wider society, and within science and engineering.

Find out more here.