Keynote speakers

Assistant Professor, Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law, U of T and the Canada Research Chair in AI and Access to Justice

About the speaker

Abdi Aidid is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law and the Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Access to Justice. Professor Aidid’s research and teaching focus on civil adjudication, privacy law and the intersection of law and technology.

Professor Aidid holds a B.A. from the University of Toronto, a J.D. from Yale Law School and an LL.M. from the University of Toronto. He previously practised litigation and arbitration at Covington & Burling LLP in New York City and Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP in Toronto, and served as vice president, legal at Blue J, where he led the development of machine learning enabled legal research tools.

In 2024 – 2025, Professor Aidid served as a visiting associate professor at Yale Law School and currently serves as the Ian D. Shugart Visiting Scholar at the Canada School of Public Service, where he collaborates with departments across the federal public service on topics related to ethical technology use and privacy. He is a faculty affiliate at the Future of Law Lab and the Centre for Ethics.

Assistant Professor, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, U of T

About the speaker

Karina Vold is an assistant professor at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. She is also a research lead at the U of T Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, an AI2050 early career fellow with the Schmidt Sciences Foundation, a faculty associate at the U of T Centre for Ethics, and an associate fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.

She specializes in the philosophy of cognitive science and artificial intelligence, with research focused on cognitive enhancement, human autonomy, decision-making, AI in science and medicine, and the ethics and safety of AI. Her research has been featured in national and international news outlets, including CBC News, BBC News, Yahoo Finance, MIT Technology Review and CNA. She has delivered more than 150 keynote lectures and talks on the ethics of AI and other emerging technologies to audiences at academic, government and corporate events.