True North conference in Kitchener set to resume ‘tech for good’ discussion

They're expected to take up the mantle championed at the inaugural 2018 event — "tech for good" — and continue to explore ways technology can be used to improve the planet and make our lives better.

Speakers include:

•Journalist and author Kara Swisher. Her talk is titled No More Excuses. Lets Fix This Thing. Early tech founders didn't really understand what they were building, but they took in billions worth of investment and had to generate big profits quickly. Users also didn't bother reading the terms-of-service agreements they were signing — leading to many of the problems we see with tech giants today.

•Ann Cavoukian, former information and privacy commissioner of Ontario and one of the world's leading privacy experts. Her talk, Privacy By Design, will explore how we can preserve our privacy and freedom in an increasingly connected world.

•Mohamed Musbah, director of product at the Microsoft Research Montréal lab. His talk, Building Literate, Responsible Machines, will look at how we can ensure that individuals and communities can trust machines that are getting increasingly sophisticated, and how to balance the need for technological progress with fairness and sensitivity.

The full schedule is available at www.truenorthwaterloo.com. More than 2,000 people are expected to attend the two-day conference.

On Wednesday afternoon, David Stein, managing partner of Leaders Fund, will announce the heavily anticipated topic of the 2019 Leaders Prize, Canada's largest artificial intelligence (AI) competition.

Using AI as an underlying technology, teams will be tasked with developing solutions to a meaningful and significant global issue.

by James Jackson

Email: jjackson@therecord.com Twitter