Ottawa: Artificial Intelligence and the future of work: From Governance and Project Management to Attitudes, Anxieties, Acceptance and Trust

Description

Artificial Intelligence and the future of work: From Governance and Project Management to Attitudes, Anxieties, Acceptance and Trust

Come explore the Future of Work with CIO Canada and 3 of the most respected professors in the field of AI: Alex Ramirez of the Sprott School of Business,  Stéphane Gagnon, of the Université du Québec en Outaouais and Gregory Richards of the Telfer School of Management.  Together they will be covering everything from Governance of AI technologies to Managing Artificial Intelligence Projects to people's attitudes and acceptance of these new technologies.  The discussion will be moderated by Rachel Porteous  of the CIO Association of Canada. 

AI Governance: Artificial Intelligence (AI) introduces a number of issues not normally anticipated by IT or BI frameworks. For example, while BI-generated reports tend to be aggregated such that any one individual's information is effectively hidden, some AI algorithms need granular data which create potential confidentiality and privacy issues. Moreover, aspects such as informed consent (do the people whose data are being used need to provide consent), transparency (do we have visibility into how the AI algorithm arrives at its recommendations) and fairness (what do we do in the case of apparent bias) have to be considered.  Gregory Richards will focus on potential solutions to some of these complex issues raised by the increasing use of AI in organizations.

AI Project Management:  "Nothing is what it seems" Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects have rapidly taken ground throughout the IT project portfolios of many organizations. Given the relative novelty of this technology to the general population of IT professionals, many project teams have had to develop their own Project Management (PM) strategies inspired from existing practice. The relative success of AI projects has been greatly influenced by the ability of stakeholders at all levels to "see through" what AI seems to offer and devise a learning and adaptation strategy that is most effective given their context. Stéphane Gagnon will discuss his work on analysing AI projects and strategies and help assess how cost-effective and successful AI PM capabilities can emerge, while avoiding potential pitfalls typical of AI implementation.

Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Work: Attitudes, Anxiety, Acceptance, and Trust: Understanding workers' attitudes towards artificial intelligence applications and social robots is primordial when organizations decide to implement these solutions within their processes. Studies have found that people are mostly willing to use these applications if they are given the opportunity, but at the same time they would like to understand the consequences associated with those decisions. To facilitate the acceptance of these new solutions and for people to trust them, a clear and transparent policy about how organizations are imagining the future of work is needed.  Alex Ramirez will focus on the complex issue of adoption.

Panelists:

Gregory Richards, MBA, Ph.D., FCMC, is currently Director of the Executive MBA program and Interim Vice-Dean of Undergraduate and Professional Graduate Programs at the Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa. Before joining academia, he worked as a management consultant (certified under the auspices of CMC-Canada), a visiting professor at the Western Management Development Centre in Denver, Colorado, and Director of Market Development at Cognos Incorporated. Early in his career, he worked as a public servant at Transport Canada and Consulting and Audit Canada and subsequently as a consultant to several government departments. At the University of Ottawa, in addition to his administrative roles, he managed the school's public sector performance management research cluster and the IBM Centre for Business Analytics. He has recently launched the Government Analytics Research Institute with colleagues from Carleton University, the University of Quebec in Outaouais, SAS and the Institute on Governance. He has published research in the Journal of Public Administration and Research, Information & Management, the International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, and the Journal of Computer Information Systems. He has also published an edited book on Big Data and Analytics in Government and has delivered several conference presentations on the topic of performance measurement and management in the public sector.

Stéphane Gagnon is Associate Professor of Business Technology Management (BTM) at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO), based in Gatineau, National Capital Region. He is also a founding member of the Government Analytics Research Institute (GARI) a consortium between Carleton University, University of Ottawa, and UQO, including partners such as the Institute on Governance and SAS Canada. Before joining UQO in 2006, he taught at New Jersey Institute of Technology (2002-2006), Université du Québec à Montréal (1997-2002), McGill University (2000), and a dozen other universities in 10 countries as a part-time professor. He obtained a Ph.D. in Business Administration, specialized in Technology Management and Strategy, from the Université du Québec à Montréal (1994-2001), an M.A. in Public Administration from Carleton University (1991-1994), and a B.Soc.Sc<http://B.Soc.Sc>. in Economics & International and Comparative Politics from the University of Ottawa (1988-1991). His research deals with digital transformation and big data analytics, applied to the financial services industry and public administration. Among other projects, he leads a research network to develop the first BTM Body of Knowledge (BOK), in partnership with IT Association of Canada (ITAC), with $160,000 MITACS Grant. This initiative will lead to the first unified guide for the BTM profession, identifying the common core competencies among several related standards, and ensuring practitioners at all levels can easily identify their best career growth opportunities.

Alex Ramirez is an Associate Professor in Information Systems at the Sprott School of Business – Carleton University. He has worked in education for over 30 years. He obtained his PhD from the Molson School of Business – Concordia University in Montreal, a master's degree from Syracuse University in the U.S. and a BSc. High Honours from ITESM, Mexico's top private university.

His area of expertise is adoption of emerging information technologies, especially, decision support information systems in organizations. Adoption is a complex issue that includes behavioural and social issues, not only technological. Currently working with colleagues at Carleton University in a New Frontiers in Research project funded by the Government of Canada "Imagining Canada's Digital Twin," and in an "Urban Futures" project. With colleagues from the University of Ottawa and the University of Quebec in the Outaouais in several projects in analytics in Canada's Capital Region. Founding member of the Government Analytics Research Institute (GARI) and Analytics in Government Quarterly. He is member of Carleton University's cross disciplinary Institute for Data Science and the Human Computer Interaction group.