Artificial intelligence (AI) is making its presence felt in all scientific fields and every sphere of daily life, from astrophysics to medicine, from law and finance to sustainable development.
TimeWorld, a major international conference on this important and prominent topic, will be held at the University of Montreal's MIL campus on May 5, 6 and 7. It will include a hundred talks, 8 panel discussions and 3 artistic performances on the theme of AI. The large-scale event is organized by the University of Montreal and Innovaxiom, a company that develops and executes science projects.
TimeWorld will be a meeting place for ideas, divided into four main themes: measured AI (mathematics, physics, etc.), the AI of the living (medicine, biology, etc.), perceived AI (psychology, history, etc.) and AI in art (literature, music, etc.).
"TimeWorld will take stock of the current state of artificial intelligence," said Laurence Honnorat, president of Innovaxiom. "It is, first and foremost, a space for sharing knowledge, expertise and points of view, where the humanities and social sciences mingle with experimental sciences to give everyone food for thought. We will draw on complementarity, transdisciplinarity and cultural diversity to generate new ideas and collaborations."
"The University of Montreal is excited about hosting this event at its MIL campus," said Marie-Josée Hébert, Vice-Rector of Research, Discovery, Creation and Innovation at UdeM. "This is a great opportunity to share the latest knowledge on artificial intelligence. AI plays such a vital role in society today that we felt it was important for everyone to understand how it works and all the ways in which it is being applied in health, the humanities and the arts."
Reflecting the pluralism of UdeM's disciplines
Valerie Amiraux, Vice-Rector, Community and International Partnerships at UdeM, observed that the event embodies the original vision for the MIL campus: "This neighborhood, where we officially opened our new campus in 2019, a few blocks from Mila, is at the crossroads of several communities with many faces," she said. "Our MIL campus was designed to foster knowledge transfer between the student community, the research community and the surrounding communities, to decompartmentalize disciplines, to open a dialogue between them, to spawn new ideas."
As befits their vitality and leadership in the field of AI, Montreal and its University will be well represented at TimeWorld. In addition to two distinguished alumni-astrophysicist Hubert Reeves and astronaut David Saint-Jacques-some 20 members of the UdeM community will be there as speakers or panelists.
The talks and panel discussions will have a Q&A format. They will be taped and made available free of charge on the European YouTube channel Ideas in Science. "TimeWorld is very forward-looking and collaborative," said Honnorat. "We believe that intelligence isn't to be found in a single brain, but rather springs from collective striving."
