6 May 2026
Are we designing AI to serve us - or replace us? with David Gerhard
A thought-provoking discussion with Dr. David Gerhard, a leading AI researcher and computer scientist on the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, its potential to transform society, and the ethical challenges that come with it. In this conversation, interspersed with excerpts from AI pioneer and Nobel Laureate, Geoffrey Hinton’s Knight Distinguished Lecture, we hear how AI's decision-making processes differ from human cognition, about the risks and benefits of large language models, the role of governance, regulation, and international cooperation in shaping AI development, and the importance of designing AI to serve human values.
About David Gerhard:
Professor and Department Head of Computer Science, University of Manitoba;
2018 & 2014 Paragon Award of Innovation, University of Regina / Regina Chamber of Commerce);
2016 Award for Excellence in Teaching, University of Regina Alumni Association;
Co-founder; Co-owner; Head of research and applied innovation, Shiverware Interactive Software Developments, Inc;
About Geoffrey Hinton
Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, University of Toronto;
Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (https://cifar.ca/);
Set up the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/life-sciences/gatsby) at University College London;
Director of "Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception" program funded by the
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (https://cifar.ca/) (2004-2013);
Worked at Google where he became a Vice President and Engineering Fellow (2013-2023);
Fellow of the UK Royal Society (https://royalsociety.org/), the Royal Society of Canada (https://rsc-src.ca/), the Association for the
Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (https://aaai.org/);
One of researchers who introduced the back-propagation (https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/backprop.html) algorithm and first to use
backpropagation for learning word embeddings;
His research group in Toronto made major breakthroughs in deep learning that have
revolutionized speech recognition and object classification;
Awards include the David E. Rumelhart prize (https://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/derprize/announce2001.html), the IJCAI award for research excellence (http://ijcai.org/awards/),
the Killam prize for Engineering (https://canadacouncil.ca/prizes/killam), The NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal (https://nserc-crsng.canada.ca/en/prizes), the IEEE Frank Rosenblatt
medal, the IEEE James Clerk Maxwell Gold medal, the NEC C&C award, the BBVA award, the
Honda Prize, the Princess of Asturias Award, the ACM Turing Award and the Queen Elizabeth
Prize for Engineering;
About Michael Benarroch
President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manitoba since July 2020;
Professor in Department of Economics, Toronto Metropolitan University (2017-2020);
Provost and Vice-President (Academic) at Toronto Metropolitan University (2017-2020), acting as the institution’s chief academic and operating officer;
Dean of the I.H. Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba (2011-2017);
For more information about Michael Benarroch, see here (https://umanitoba.ca/about-um/president).
About What’s the Big Idea?
What’s the Big Idea? is an award-winning podcast hosted by University of Manitoba President Michael Benarroch. Each episode features conversations with big thinkers from the UM community who are contributing to the cultural, social, and economic well-being of people everywhere. It is produced by the University of Manitoba in partnership with Everything Podcasts.
Links and Resources
Q&A with David Gerhard and Geoffrey Hinton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4t9xZQF1U0).
Dr. David Gerhard at the University of Manitoba (https://umanitoba.ca/science/directory/computer-science/david-gerhard)
Can Machines Think? David Gerhard | TEDxFort Garry (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO_HRmfSQmQ)
Geoffrey Hinton - Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2024/hinton/facts/)
University of Manitoba: Discover programs and opportunities (https://umanitoba.ca/)
Alumni Relations: Stay connected with UM (https://umanitoba.ca/alumni)
UM News: Read more about UM events and research (https://news.umanitoba.ca/)
Help make big ideas possible
Research at the University of Manitoba is driven by curiosity and made possible through partnership and philanthropy. If this conversation sparked your curiosity, we’d love to connect you with opportunities to support world-class research and discovery at UM.
Learn more or get in touch (https://umanitoba.ca/giving/#contact-us) today.
Music
Adrenaline Rush by Will Bonness, Associate Professor, Desautels Faculty of Music.
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