September 26, 2025 | Taylor Owen, Max Bell Professor at McGill University and Founding Director of the Centre for Media, Technology, and Democracy, has been appointed to the Government of Canada’s AI Strategy Task Force. The Task Force, composed of experts from industry, academia, and civil society, will provide advice to the Government of Canada on its renewed AI strategy. Taylor Owen will contribute his expertise to advancing safe AI systems and strengthening public confidence in their use.
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Published on: 30 Sep 2025
August 5, 2025 | Anil Wasif, MPP '21, in his article for Policy Magazine, argues that low- and middle-income countries should prioritize context-specific solutions over expensive, large-scale AI models. He contends that successful adoption depends on adapting existing technologies to local realities. A process known as “architectural innovation” rather than pursuing capital-intensive invention.
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Published on: 12 Aug 2025
February 12, 2025 | Professor Taylor Owen writes about the "vibe-shift" of AI as he comes back from the Paris AI Action Summit. Owen explains how the governments are pivoting from regulating AI risks to aggressively pursuing foreign direct investment, and Europe faces a new era of AI adoption.
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Published on: 17 Feb 2025
January 16, 2025 | In an article by The Global and Mail, Professor Taylor Owen shared his concerns regarding the AI becoming a threat for younger generation. The rapid advancement of the AI, poses a grave question of who is responsible for the actions and outcomes of an AI chatbot? Especially when it comes to children and adolescents.
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Published on: 16 Jan 2025
A McGill-led research team has developed the first real-time, on-site technology capable of detecting and deciphering nanoplastics from all other particles in water, a capacity akin to being able to find a needle in a haystack within milliseconds.
Microplastic pieces are between 1 micrometre and 5 millimetres, roughly equivalent to a grain of rice. Nanoplastics are far tinier - a single nanometre is just 0.000001 millimetres. For comparison, a human hair is approximately 80,000–100,000 nanometers wide.
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Published on: 4 Jul 2024
ChatGPT and other generative AI tools are changing the way students learn, from grade school to grad school. On April 25, the Higher Council of Education, jointly with the Commission on Ethics in Science and Technology, submitted a report calling for the supervision and regulation of AI in higher education in Quebec.
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Published on: 8 May 2024
May 7, 2024 | We are living in an age of breakthroughs propelled by advances in artificial intelligence. Technologies that were once the realm of science fiction are now transpiring into our reality. Machine Like Us is a technology show where every other Tuesday Taylor Owen sits down with the people shaping this rapidly approaching future.
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Published on: 7 May 2024
The FRQS Dual AI Chairs Program supports research collaborations across disciplines in pursuit of the significant potential of AI to address some of humanity’s greatest health challenges.
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Published on: 21 Sep 2023
NSERC Alliance Grant supports McGill-led Canadian team, new global climate center on AI for biodiversity change
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Published on: 18 Sep 2023
March 16, 2023 | Master of Public Policy Candidate Aftab Ahmed, wrote about the innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne recently launching the second phase of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy. Ottawa’s attempts to frame the ‘rules of the game’ for its digital economy is commendable, and the U.S. should be observing and emulating this approach. He said "Let me be clear: technology is not the enemy. Novel innovations can undeniably act as positive economic disruptors."
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Published on: 17 Mar 2023
AI can help identify biases in news reporting that we wouldn't otherwise see. Researchers from McGill University got a computer program to generate news coverage of COVID-19 using headlines from CBC articles as prompts. They then compared the simulated news coverage to the actual reporting at the time and found that CBC coverage was less focused on the medical emergency and more positively focused on personalities and geo-politics.
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Published on: 6 Dec 2022
Human languages are notoriously complex, and linguists have long thought it would be impossible to teach a machine how to analyze speech sounds and word structures in the way humans do. But researchers from McGill University, MIT, and Cornell University have taken a step in this direction. They have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can learn the rules and patterns of human languages on its own.
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Published on: 12 Oct 2022
As the world fights climate change, will the increasingly widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) be a help or a hindrance? In a paper published this week in Nature Climate Change, a team of experts in AI, climate change, and public policy present a framework for understanding the complex and multifaceted relationship of AI with greenhouse gas emissions, and suggest ways to better align AI with climate change goals.
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Published on: 28 Jun 2022
Artificial neural networks modeled on real brains can perform cognitive tasks
A new study shows that artificial intelligence networks based on human brain connectivity can perform cognitive tasks efficiently.
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Published on: 9 Aug 2021
How can we predict suicide risk in students, especially at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected many people’s mental health? According to researchers from Montreal and France, self-esteem represents an important predictive marker of suicidal risk. The team from McGill University, University of Montreal, Inserm, and Université de Bordeaux is using artificial intelligence to identify factors that accurately predict suicidal behavior in students.
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Published on: 28 Jul 2021
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