Keynote Speaker
Dr. Muhammad Abdul-Mageed
Bio:
Dr. Muhammad Abdul-Mageed is a Canada Research Chair in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, and an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. He holds joint appointments in the School of Information and the Department of Linguistics, with an associate membership in Computer Science. Dr. Abdul-Mageed leads the UBC Deep Learning & NLP Group and co-directs major national research initiatives including the I Trust AI and Ensuring Full Literacy Partnership Grants. His research explores deep representation learning and natural language socio-pragmatics, with a mission to build equitable, socially aware AI systems that enhance human well-being, foster safer digital environments, and reduce information overload. His work spans speech and language understanding, machine translation, and computational social media analysis. Dr. Abdul-Mageed is a founding member of the Center for Artificial Intelligence Decision Making and Action, and a member of the Institute for Computing, Information, and Cognitive Systems. His contributions continue to shape the future of inclusive and responsible AI.
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Personal web page: https://mageed.arts.ubc.ca/
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Title:
AI for People: Culturally-Grounded, Reasoning-Centric Language Models
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Date: December 6th, 2025
Location: Auditorium/Virtual Talk
Conference Venus: The British University in Dubai
Live Stream Link: TBA
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Abstract:
Modern language models remain limited in linguistic coverage and cultural competence, often producing fluent yet culturally narrow outputs that miss dialect, register, and pragmatic cues. This talk charts a path to culturally-grounded, reasoning-centric Language AI. Drawing on a cluster of recent projects, I will (i) present global-scale evidence of coverage gaps and lost dialectal/cultural nuance across speech, vision, and text models, and (ii) introduce interventions that combine human-centered design, compute-efficient methods, and reasoning-centric techniques. Case studies focus on Arabic (across varieties) and African languages. The goal is simple: models that reason about meaning and context while respecting who is speaking—AI for people.
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Former Keynote Speaker and their youtupe speech
2024
Dr. Iyad Rahwan
- You can view the YouTube recording of the keynote “Opportunities at the intersection of AI and behavioral science” here: Prof Iyad’s Rahwan Keynote
Bio:
Prof. Iyad Rahwan is director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where he founded and directs the Center for Humans & Machines. He is also an honorary professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin. Prior to moving to Berlin, he was an Associate Professor of Media Arts & Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A native of Aleppo, Syria, Rahwan holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
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Personal web page: https://rahwan.me/
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Title:
Opportunities at the intersection of AI and behavioral science
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Date: September 21st, 2024 (Time: 10:10am UTC/GMT +4 )
Location: Auditorium/Virtual Talk
Conference Venus: The British University in Dubai
Live Stream Link: https://youtube.com/live/s91fTk6mcpA?feature=share
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Abstract:
This talk will outline a research agenda at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and behavioral science. It will summarize various research efforts to study machine behavior, as well as human perception of and preferences over such behavior. The talk will argue that this behavioral methodology will become increasingly relevant with the rise of large-scale, generative AI systems.