DoT’s mission is to convene a sustained and nuanced societal dialogue between leaders, experts and community members around the social impacts of AI in British Columbia and Canada.

It is one part of a set of efforts articulated in SFU's AI Strategy, developed to better understand how the university can research and utilize AI for the greater good of education, research, and society.

The current public conversation around AI can be described as stuck between catastrophization (“we’re all going to die”) and tech-optimism (“this will solve all of our problems”). The hype and misinformation, the speed of change, and the absence of a coherent channel of conversation between technologists, policy makers, scientists, ethicists, social scientists, the business community and the public produces a potentially dangerous situation where gaps in understanding grow every day, making it nearly impossible to work out solutions for responsible use of AI. DoT intends to counteract this growing gap through targeted dialogue and public engagement.