Gradzette The university of mANITOBA’S GRADUATE STUDENT Magazine novemBER 2015
What the new federal government can do for graduate students Page 6
Gradzette THE UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA’S GRADUATE STUDENT MAGAZINE
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November 2015
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Gradzette c/o The Manitoban Newspaper Publications Corporation 105 University Centre University of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2N2 General inquiries and advertising Phone: (204) 474.6535 Fax: (204) 474.7651 Email: editor@gradzette.com Editor:Tom Ingram Copy Editor: Katy MacKinnon Designer: Marc Lagace Contributors: Brian Hauri, Carolyne Kroeker, Lauren Siddall Cover: Carolyne Kroeker The Gradzette is the official student magazine of the University of Manitoba’s graduate student community and is published the first week of each month by the Manitoban Newspaper Publications Corporation. The Gradzette is a democratic student organization, open to participation from all students. It exists to serve its readers as students and citizens. The magazine’s primary mandate is to report fairly and objectively on issues and events of importance and interest to the graduate students of the University of Manitoba, to provide an open forum for the free expression and exchange of opinions and ideas, and to stimulate meaningful debate on issues that affect or would otherwise be of interest to the student body and/or society in general. The Gradzette serves as a training ground for students interested in any aspect of journalism. Students and other interested parties are invited to contribute. Please contact the editor listed above for submission guidelines. The Gradzette reserves the right to edit all submissions and will not publish any material deemed by its editorial board to be discriminatory, racist, sexist, homophobic or libelous. Opinions expressed in letters and articles are solely those of the authors.
All contents are ©2015 and may not be reprinted without the express written permission of the Manitoban Newspaper Publications Corporation.
In this issue
The ethics of artificial intelligence
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by Brian Hauri
A step toward more inclusive education
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by Dana Hatherly
6 Words, Crossed.
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By Shane Gibson (@tsgibson) 13
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Across 1. Like Bettie Page 6. Can’t pay the bill 11. By yourself 12. “The Raven” author, briefly 13. Debussy’s “___ de Lune” 14. Arrive, in Quebec 15. Hamilton player 17. June bug 20. Took the title 21. 2009 Hilary Swank flick 23. Toronto player 27. Use pressure 29. Perform with a choir 30. Hall of Fame members 31. “The Fox and the Hound” fox
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5. Washington’s hairpiece 6. Brad Pitt thriller 7. It’s cut and dried 8. Oil cartel letters
34. Chemical ending 35. Capital of Norway 36. Like some whisky orders
The silent decline by Tom Ingram
Diversions Page 7
November 2015
The ethics of artificial intelligence Researcher profile: Nicholas Novelli
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Brian Hauri
hen you think of artificial intelligence (AI) you may picture an android like Data on Star Trek, the artificial general intelligence of The Terminator’s Skynet, or any of the many incarnations of AI that have been embraced by popular culture.
As our level of technology and understanding of human neural mechanisms continues to grow, so will the prevalence of AI in our lives. We have AIs competing on Jeopardy!, playing chess, and even answering questions for us on our smartphones. So what happens if we develop an AI that seems human enough to treat it as such? This is where the scholarship of recent University of Manitoba philosophy graduate Nicholas Novelli comes in. For the last few years, he has been researching the “ethics of artificial intelligence – what it would take for machines to have moral standing.” In his provocatively titled MA thesis, “Adventures in space racism: going beyond the Turing Test to determine AI moral standing,” which draws attention to potential parallels between treatment of AI and racial discrimination, Novelli set out to test the implications of how our current moral theories would deal with the advent of an AI that was able to pass for a human. Novelli’s thesis was conducted within a tradition of philosophical inquiry called Analytic philosophy, which he explained “works on the basis of logical arguments: taking certain claims and showing what follows logically from them.”
More specifically, he investigated a number of moral theories and came up with “thought experiments to test them – imaginary situations that might have very different implications than everyday cases.” Novelli gave a snapshot of what this process looks like. “Some moral theories might seem very plausible and intuitive on first impression, but counterexamples can show that if you accept them, you would have to accept unpalatable conclusions.”
“The process is to test theories until we get one that doesn’t seem to have any implications we can’t accept”
– Nicholas Novelli
“For example, some have proposed that individuals have moral standing in virtue of having a sufficiently complex network of dispositions,” he said. “So a sufficiently advanced computer could have moral standing as well.” “But if we accept that as the criteria for moral standing, we could imagine an otherwise normal but extremely unambitious human being who has very few dispositions – maybe the same amount as a Roomba. We would then have to say that either robot vacuums have moral stand-
Photo provided by Nicholas Novelli
ing, or this human doesn’t – both obviously unacceptable. The process is to test theories until we get one that doesn’t seem to have any implications we can’t accept.” From his new home in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he has began his PhD. work at the University of Edinburgh, Novelli also spoke of some of the limitations of this type of research. At the outset, it’s necessary to make a number of background assumptions to narrow the scope of the arguments being presented, Novelli said. If an individual did not agree with a background assumption – say for example that animals such as fish should not be considered in moral decision making, then the arguments that follow that assumption would not apply to them. Having acknowledged these limitations, he chose the University of Edinburgh to continue his research, a university that’s the oldest centre for AI research in the UK and will allow him to expand the scope and applicability of his work. Novelli said that there are already centres dedicated to exploring these and related issues, such as the the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute. He recognizes the impending uncharted philosophical and moral questions with respect to artificially intelligent machines, and plans to be at the forefront of these discussions.
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Gradzette
U of M Administration building.
Photo by Lauren Siddall
A step toward more inclusive education U of M to introduce BFAR program to faculty of graduate students
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Lauren Siddall
he University of Manitoba has begun the process of creating Bona Fide Academic Requirements (BFARs) for graduate programs – a step preceding the implementation of BFARs across campus by 2017. The U of M is one of the first post-secondary institutions to implement such a wide-scale academic accessibility program. BFARs are the essential minimum requirements a student must meet in a course or program. They describe the skills, knowledge, and experiences a student must demonstrate in order to successfully graduate from a course or a program. Programs that are already subject to external accrediting bodies that lay out these conditions clearly will not need to develop BFARs – for example, many health sciences
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programs have Essential Skills and Abilities documents. Once approved by the senate, the BFARs must be posted on the program’s website. The development of the program will be led by the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL).
Nearly one in six people living in Manitoba face accessibility barriers in their day-to-day living – a problem that comes with a large cost.
According to U of M’s website, a BFAR “cannot be waived or accommodated, in the reasonable view of the unit, without consequences to the integrity of the program.” As such, the BFARs will govern the actions
of university administrators and Student Accessibility Services. The BFAR method is intended to be an open, communicative process during which students, staff, and faculty will discuss learning and teaching methods in a manner that promotes and supports inclusion across the campus. After the program is in place campus-wide, the U of M will be required to make “reasonable efforts to accommodate a student with a disability when the disability does not impair the student’s ability to fulfill the BFARs of a course or program.” Further, “if the only accommodation that can be found undermines a BFAR, then no accommodation should be made.” The BFAR program was developed in accordance with the Accessibility for Manitobans Act, which became law in December of 2013. Nearly one in six people living in Manitoba face accessibility barriers in their
November 2015
day-to-day living – a problem that comes with a large cost to those living with disabilities, communities, and businesses. To combat this, the act calls for the provincial government to create mandatory accessibility standards that apply to the government, the public sector, and the private and not-for-profit sectors in the province. As such, the U of M will be required to prepare accessibility plans every other year that outline the “identification, prevention, and removal of barriers.” Before introducing the program to the faculty of graduate studies, the CATL employed a pilot study in three programs from January to March of last year: mechanical engineering, athletic therapy, and political studies. The study included initial meetings with department heads, distributing reference material to the departments, one-on-one meetings and workshops with departments, and assessment and refinement of the draft BFARs – all of which were successfully created within a 90-day period. A number of key recommendations that surfaced as a result of the pilot study – which will be applied to subsequent drafting and implementation of BFARs – primarily centre on communication of the BFARs and their accessibility, including the collaboration of all faculties members within a program to draft the BFARs in order to avoid discordant requirements. Past accessibility issues The university, while progressive in their implementation of BFARs, has faced heated arguments on accessibility issues in the past
– most notably in the case involving professor Gabor Lukács in 2009. Lukács, a former math professor at the U of M, filed a court application after Jay Doering, the dean of graduate studies, waived the exam requirement for a PhD student who had failed a comprehensive exam in the program twice and was therefore asked to withdraw from the PhD program.
The BFAR method is intended to be an open, communicative process during which students, staff, and faculty will discuss learning and teaching methods in a manner that promotes and supports inclusion across the campus
The student appealed the withdrawal to Doering on the basis of extreme exam anxiety and was reinstated to the program. Extreme exam anxiety was considered grounds for alternate exam conditions for the student according to a decision between the department’s graduate studies committee and Student Accessibility Services. Doering rejected the proposed alternate conditions, and requested that the department of mathematics administer an oral exam to the student. When the graduate studies committee declined that option, Doering waived the exam requirement.
A member of the graduate studies committee resigned and the slot was filled by Lukács – this is when he first became involved with the case. Lukács quickly exhausted his options for academic appeals within the university, and eventually brought the matter to court, filing an application to the Manitoba Court of Queen’s bench. Lukács accused the dean of overstepping his authority and violating the University of Manitoba Act. The court application called for Doering’s decision to be discarded and a confirmation that Doering did not have the authority to make a decision without conferring with an “appeal committee of academics,” according to Maclean’s. Lukács was subsequently suspended due to a reference to the student’s name and personal information in the court application, which the university considered to be a breach of privacy regulations. U of M president David Barnard called Lukács “insubordinate,” and further faulted him for “having engaged in a pattern of behaviour with regard to [the] student which the university considers to be harassment.” The dispute was eventually settled and although the specifics remain undisclosed, Lukács’ employment relationship with the university was ended. Lukács now lives in Halifax and continues to work on research projects in his field, though he is no longer affiliated with any university. With the implementation of BFARs at the university, there will be more clear rules in place to resolve such disputes, and situations like this should no longer occur.
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GRADZETTE
The silent decline
Stagnation in CGS funding means effective decrease in award values
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Tom Ingram
he federal government gives out graduate scholarships through the Tri-council granting agencies: NSERC (natural sciences and engineering), SSHRC (social sciences and humanities), and CIHR (health sciences). This is one of the many ways in which education policy at the federal level is more relevant for graduate students than anyone else.
With a new government now settled in the House of Commons, it’s time to open up the issue of federal graduate research funding. Investment in basic research was part of the Liberal Party’s election platform and, more locally, it was identified as an area of interest by Terry Duguid, now the Member of
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Parliament for Winnipeg South. The numbers are bleak. We looked at the data on the Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS), the flagship research grant program for graduate students. This data is available online at the Tri-council agency websites, but it is reported in a format that requires some busywork in order to be usable. Most disappointingly, while the other two councils have numbers back as far as the 1990s, the CIHR’s data only dates to 2009 (the CIHR also reported data in the least usable format). Therefore we were confined to analyzing the years between 2009 and 2014. Anecdotally, the SSHRC and NSERC numbers from before 2009 are not much different. This data covers CGS award values at the master’s and doctoral levels – that is, the actual amounts given out on average. As you can see in Graph 1, there has been
essentially no change in the average value of CGS awards over the last few years. However, the inflation-adjusted average, calculated using the Bank of Canada inflation calculator, shows a marked decrease in real value of over $2,000 (Graph 2). Graphs 3 and 4 show the change in the average award in nominal and real terms respectively. For six year now, federal neglect of graduate student research in Canada has led to a significant decline in the value of these awards. A hike in Tri-council funding is long overdue.
Graph 1
Graph 2
Graph 3
Graph 4
NOVEMBER 2015
Diversions Words, Crossed.
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Across 1. Destroying tests 6. Beauty’s courter 11. Steel Mill worker 12. One using a calculator, at times 13. Dad’s brother 14. In a lather? 15. Jock 17. 1959 Kingston Trio hit 18. Knife wounds 20. Viper 23. Afghani neighbour 27. Go to class 29. “Royals” singer 30. Against the law 32. Summer cooler 33. Start of the 14th century 35. He hosted Nixon in 1972 38. “I’m speechless” 42. Author Horatio 44. Big & Rich’s Save a Horse ( ___ Cowboy) 45. Cold War defense gp. 46. “___ say it?” 47. Fortune tellers 48. Burn with hot liquid Down 1. Spanish water 2. Pessimist’s word
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3. Rash reaction? 4. Actress Carter and others 5. Hallmark fill 6. Noisemakers sometimes found in spokes 7. Tokyo, once 8. First lady’s man? 9. Calendar abbr. 10. “___ Little Tenderness” (Otis Redding song) 16. Roofing goop 19. ___-Cone 20. Ring great 21. Poivre partner 22. Friend 24. George Gershwin’s brother 25. Recipe directive 26. Once called
28. Sleep stage 31. Play part 34. Major artery 35. Supplies staff 36. Skin cream ingredient 37. Like Shrek 39. River in Poland 40. Blind a falcon 41. Put into words 43. Hearing aid? S E E P A G E
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PREVIOUS ANSWERS
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The Gradzette Bulletin Board Federal election night: Oct. 19
Photos by Carolyne Kroeker
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hether they were celebrating or gnashing their teeth, you could feel the excitement in the air as dozens of U of M students gathered at the Hub to watch the election results come in. Students cheered, heckled, and sang by turns in what was easily one of the most thrilling campus events in years. Anyone who still thinks students are apathetic should have been there.
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