Ethics in Translation: AI Across Borders
Artificial Intelligence ethics is often framed in universal terms — but what happens when we look beyond the Western contexts that shape those frameworks?
Ishtiaque Ahmed is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. He directs the Third Space research group at the DGP Lab. He is also a graduate faculty member of the School of Environment, a Faculty Fellow at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, and a Senior Fellow at the Massey College. He co-organizes the monthly UofT Critical Computing Seminar that hosts speakers analyzing computer science and its applications from the perspectives of marginalization, bias, and oppression. He also co-directs the PRISM program at the CS Department that trains students from marginalized communities for higher education in computer science. He also leads the weekly Critical Data Science reading group that studies and analyzes recent scholarly work around AI and Machine Learning from various critical points of view. His research interest is situated at the intersection of computer science and the critical social sciences. His work is often motivated by social justice and sustainability issues, and he puts them in the academic contexts of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information and Communication Technology and Development (ICTD). He operates through a wide range of technical and methodological apparatuses from ethnography to design, and from NLP to tangible user interface.
Ahmed earned his PhD at Cornell University, where he was advised by Steve Jackson. Before moving to North America, he studied and taught Computer Science at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). He developed and still mentors the first HCI community in Bangladesh. He is a Schwartz Reisman Institute Faculty Fellow (’21), Senior Massey Fellow (’21), Fulbright Centennial Fellow (’19), a Connaught Scholar (’18), a Fulbright S&T Fellow (’11), and an OpenStreetMap Scholar (’10). His current research is supported by all three divisions of Canada’s federal tri-council research agency: NSERC, CIHR, and SSHRC, among others.
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Artificial Intelligence ethics is often framed in universal terms — but what happens when we look beyond the Western contexts that shape those frameworks?
This gathering brings together research groups working at the intersections of computing, design, and society — a chance to hear what others are exploring, share
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Ramaravind Kommiya Mothilal, Faisal M Lalani, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, Shion Guha, and Sharifa Sultana. “Talking About the Assumption in the Room.” CHI 2025
Ananya Bhattacharjee, Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Dipto Das, S M Taiabul Haque, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. “Residual Mobilities and Religious Practices: Exploring the Experiences of the Hindu Migrants in Canada“. CSCW 2025
Abdullah Hasan Safir, Noshin Tahsin, Pratyasha Saha, Dipannita Nandi, Zulkarin Jahangir, Ce- cily Morrison, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed and Nusrat Jahan Mim. “Collective Agency in Art-making: Towards Community-centric Design of Text-to-Image (T2I) AI Tools“. AIES 2025
Pratyasha Saha, Nadira Nadira Nowsher, Ayien Utshob Baidya, Nusrat Jahan Mim, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, S M Taiabul Haque. “Computing and the Stigmatized: Trust, Surveillance, and Space Politics with the Sex Workers in Bangladesh“. CHI 2024. Winner of the Best Paper Award.
Ananya Bhattacharjee, Yuchen Zeng, Sarah Yi Xu, Dana Kulzhabayeva, Minyi Ma, Rachel Kornfield, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, Alex Mariakakis, Mary P Czerwinski, Anastasia Kuzminykh, Michael Liut, Joseph Jay Williams. “Understanding the Role of Large Language Models in Personalizing and Scaffolding Strategies to Combat Academic Procrastination” .CHI 2024. Honorable Mention for the Best Paper Award.