Tag: panel discussion

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Arts and Culture Community

AI and the generative art of writing

Writing Matters panel at the Atwater Library. Photo by Emma Bell / The Concordian

The Quebec Writers Federation hosted a panel discussion on artificial intelligence.

On Sept. 21, the Quebec Writers Federation (QWF) held a writers’ panel titled AI and the Future of Writing at the Atwater Library Auditorium. As part of their Writing Matters campaign, the organization invited Professor Cheryl Chan, Professor Andrew Piper, and author Sean Michaels to discuss the academic, professional and emotional landscape surrounding this burgeoning new tool. 

Investigative journalist Julian Sher opened the talk with a colourful and poignant introduction, ironically written by ChatGPT. His subversive humor, wit and ease set a fantastic tone for the evening. 

The panel discussed the definition, benefits, fears and future applications of generative AI models. Piper defined generative AI models as a new power of memorization, a productive large-language models that are trained on data and produce information based on prompts.  Michaels likened AI to a mystical boulder in the forest that finishes your sentences, having used the tool to write part of his new fiction publication. Chan recounted her research into programming her own AI model. She argues that by analyzing how this technology accumulates information, one can question the dominant, normalized presentation of voice. Piper took a more relaxed approach, finding a cool, detached perspective to analyze the lack of and need for AI regulation. 

As the speakers bounced off each other, it became evident that they were pre-emptively answering to how we should think or feel about the way in which AI destabilizes a general idea of humanity and the human condition. The guests suggest that writers and academics should critically engage with discourse to avoid fear mongering a dystopian future. 

Chan contended that humans will always have a certain mystique and subjectivity, optimistically concluding that: “Fast food didn’t kill the chefs.” The public, therefore, should trust in the resiliency and counter-cultural ability of artists, creatives and writers.  

Michael asserted that the fears around AI don’t come from inherent danger within the technology itself but from the wider implications of this technology within a collectively predetermined economic structure. For the panel, the issue is not the fact that AI exists, but rather that it exacerbates the precarity and uncertainty that already exist in capitalism. Michaels suggests that there would be less of an anxiety surrounding job precarity brought on by AI if our economic system prioritized care and collective security.

While the group touched briefly on the effects of societal stratification and wealth inequality, there was curiously little discussion on how to make AI more accessible. While Piper was adamant that a safe use of AI should not replace but augment skills, the discussion did not provide pragmatic solutions to reach this goal. 

Sher guided the second portion of the evening into a Q&A session. The crowd provided plenty of thought-provoking comments. Whether the comments came from a struggling lyricist to a passionate teacher concerned with literacy in their classroom, the room was alive with nods of approval, murmurs of disgust and whispers of excitement. 

The evening closed with wine, cheese and a more nuanced understanding of the technology that pervades us.

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News

What experts think about human rights violations in China

A panel on China’s human rights violations was held in Concordia University’s Faubourg building on Jan. 15.

The experts, who were invited by the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), expressed concerns about the Uyghur Muslim concentration camps in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in Western China. They also discussed the brutal repression in Hong Kong and Tibet, as well as China’s increasing influence on the Western world and its implication for the future of democracy.

The event took place just days after Human Rights Watch (HRW) executive director Kenneth Roth was denied entry into Hong Kong and HRW’s launch event for its World Report 2020 was disrupted by protestors, according to MIGS executive director Kyle Matthews.

“Human rights issues in China are nothing new,” said speaker Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, Senior Fellow at both the University of Ottawa’s Institute for Science, Society and Policy and the University of Alberta’s China Institute. She listed historical events such as the Cultural Revolution, the Xidan Democracy Wall, and the Tiananmen Square Massacre which she said “trampled on individual human rights in a myriad of ways.”

McCuaig-Johnston continued to explain that although China has lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty since 1978, this is not the same as ensuring individual human rights. She described how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses detention as a pressure tactic against dissidents and the abusive conditions under which they are detained, which were revealed by HRW’s interviews with former prisoners. She also explained the social credit system, in place since 2014, and the CCP’s widespread interference in Western countries.

Both McCuaig-Johnston and Benjamin Fung, a Canada Research Chair in Data Mining for Cybersecurity and an Action Free Hong Kong Montreal activist, highlighted the CCP’s infiltration in Canadian academics and described the pressure on faculty and Chinese students to self-censor criticism of the Chinese government.

The CCP’s use of technology, such as facial and voice recognition for repression, was also extensively discussed by both experts. Fung additionally focused on Chinese companies’ goal to expand the 5G network––he explained that the CCP controls every large corporation in China and that technology companies are obligated to cooperate with Chinese intelligence units.

“It’s about trust, you trust Apple to update your iPhone because it is a private company,” Fung explained, adding that we cannot trust Chinese companies who would introduce malware into the 5G network if the CCP asked them to.

Fung also spoke in detail about China’s one country, two systems policy and the CCP’s broken promise: its decision to maintain control over Hong Kong’s government instead of allowing universal suffrage, which Fung asserts was promised in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. He described what he called an ongoing humanitarian crisis and a system of police brutality, lengthy prison sentences, sexual assault, and white terror––attacks on pro-democracy activists.

The situation in Tibet was discussed by Sherap Therchin, executive director of the Canada-Tibet Committee, who explained it has been 70 years since China illegally invaded Tibet, and the Western world seems to have forgotten about it. He described the CCP’s reflexive control strategy: how they have been feeding manufactured information about Tibet to target groups so consistently that the Western world now believes their narrative that Tibet was historically part of China.

Therchin continued to explain that in the Western world’s eyes, control over Tibet is now an internal issue––a problem for China to deal with without Western influence.

Finally, Dilmurat Mahmut, a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University’s Faculty of Education, talked about the Uyghur re-education camps in place since 2017. According to documents obtained through an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, an estimated 1 million Uyghur Muslims are detained in these camps, but Mahmut said these numbers could be as high as 3 million. He explained the history of the region of Xinjiang, originally East Turkistan, and the CCP’s labeling of all Turkic Muslims in the region as potential terrorists or pre-criminals.

Mahmut described the conditions in what the CCP calls vocational training centres, and explained that Uyghur children are being forcibly detained and sent to state-run orphanages where they are forbidden from learning the Uyghur language and, instead, only learn the Chinese culture—he called this cultural genocide. Mahmut finished his presentation with a warning from Roth on the dangers of not challenging Chinese human rights abuses and worldwide interference.

 

Photos by Brittany Clarke

Categories
Sports

Vegan athletes break down stereotypes

When you think of a football player, a hockey player or a bodybuilder, veganism doesn’t necessarily come to mind right away. But with increased popularity, a vegan lifestyle has become more prominent for athletes.

At this year’s Montreal Vegan Festival, former CFL safety for the Montreal Alouettes and Saskatchewan Roughriders, Marc-Olivier Brouillette, was the spokesperson. On Sunday, Brouillette was on the All Gain, No Pain: World-Class Vegan Athletes Break Stereotypes panel to talk about his life as a vegan athlete. Also on the panel was former NHL player Georges Laraque, nationally certified fitness trainer John Lewis, as well as wellness coaches and couple Josh Goldman and Rebecca Theofanis.

During the hourlong panel, a moderator asked questions, the first being “how long have you been vegan?” Brouillette began by saying he’s been vegan for four years, having played his last three seasons in the CFL as a vegan, and citing the 2016 season as his best ever.

“As a professional athlete, when you get to that level, everyone’s good,” said Brouillette as he explains why he made the switch to being vegan. “How am I going to find that extra edge, that’s going to make me, Marc-O. Brouillette a better football player?” After doing research and after a short period of time implementing veganism, he realized the benefits and hasn’t looked back since.

Lewis was already a vegetarian. When his mother was diagnosed with colon cancer and doctors told her it was due to too much animal protein and fatty foods, he did more research and finally made the switch to being vegan. In Theofanis’s case, she made the switch after doing her research and with the aim of reducing inflammation in the body, increasing her ability as an athlete and increasing her longevity in life.

As for Laraque, he’s been vegan since 2009, which was his final NHL season. For him, the switch to a vegan lifestyle happened after seeing the documentary film, Earthlings, which asks the viewer why we, as a society, tend to value some animals above others – which the film labels “speciesism.”

The next question was where the athletes got their protein since they don’t consume animal products. For protein, a general consensus was that it can be found in everything, just not every food has the same amount. Laraque brought up a popular argument that humans need to eat meat just as animals do. The difference between us, though, is that when animals eat meat, their prey is still alive so they’re receiving all the nutrients as their body breaks down the meat. When humans eat meat, it’s already dead and processed, so we don’t get nearly the same benefits.

As for misconceptions they’ve dealt with as vegan athletes, Laraque brought up how not all vegans are necessarily healthy. Some turn vegan and don’t fuel their body with nutrient-filled whole foods, often eating meat alternatives. “The reason why I stopped [eating meat] is not to find something that tastes the same that’s actually really unhealthy,” Laraque said.

Also spoken about throughout the hour were intermittent fasting, food pairings, the amount of protein you actually need, each panelist’s favourite food and more.

 

Feature photo by Cecilia Piga, Video by Calvin Cashen

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