Every few weeks, it seems like a new or improved artificial intelligence (AI) technology reinvents what’s possible. Today, AI can write reports, create “deep fakes” that look like photographs or videos of real people, and diagnose diseases.

For Dr. Wendy H. Wong, this disruptive change is an opportunity to think and then actively shape what happens next.

A Professor of Political Science and Principal’s Research Chair in Datafication (Tier 1), Dr. Wong was named UBC Okanagan’s 2024 Researcher of the Year for Social Sciences and Humanities for her work exploring AI’s effects on human rights. She is especially interested in the digital data sourced from humans that make these AI technologies possible, tracking everything from people’s locations to website reading habits.

“Data changes what we know about each other,” says Dr. Wong. “It changes what we know about ourselves. It also changes who can use those data to nudge us towards different types of outcomes.”

While people often talk about, and can be protective of, “their” data, Dr. Wong points out that these data—though they may contain information people consider private—technically also belong to whoever collected them, often a company. She proposes thinking about data as co-created—by the people who are the sources of the data and by whoever decides to track and collect information about their various behaviours, from their daily movements to how they scroll through Instagram.

In her recent book, We, the Data, Dr. Wong expands this idea into being a “data stakeholder” and empowering people around data practices. “I think about autonomy. Do we have choice in how data are collected?”

One issue is how bias in AI and data can intensify inequities that already exist. “Like any other human creation, algorithms or data are going to be biased because people are biased.”

Dr. Wendy H. Wong at the inaugural UBC Okanagan Debates on May 3, 2023, where she spoke about how AI poses a threat to society’s social and political frameworks.

This bias can cause real-world problems, like when AI has been used to predict where police should patrol. As Dr. Wong points out, the data that an algorithm uses to make this prediction is based on where police have already patrolled in the past. If police already disproportionately patrol poorer neighbourhoods or neighbourhoods with more BIPOC residents, then based on that biased data AI will predict more crime in these areas.

With Dr. Pourang Irani, Professor of Computer Science, Dr. Wong co-leads the Digital Transparency Research Excellence Cluster at UBC Okanagan. A main goal of this interdisciplinary research team is to use both technical and non-technical perspectives to help the general public understand safety and literacy issues.

“Having digital data is actually changing the way we live,” says Dr. Wong. “We should all be data and AI literate. We need to understand the basic assumptions built in behind these technologies, and then how they can potentially affect our lives.”

While AI is rapidly changing the world we live in, Dr. Wong puts this new technology in the context of other major technological changes humans have adapted to over time, like cars. Just like humans developed laws and the separation of sidewalks and roads to keep both pedestrians and drivers safe, she advocates for both government and the creators of these technologies to be aware of and responsive to the potential harms of both AI and digital data.

“I’m hoping the more I talk about data and human rights, the more people will start thinking about technology differently. These AI technologies have been created by people who haven’t been forced to think about the social and political ramifications of their inventions. Now we have to do that.”

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WHETHER HE’S HIKING A NEW PEAK or setting up cameras for field research, Dr. Adam Ford can’t help but see the Okanagan Valley’s incredible beauty—and the intense pressure the region is under.

“The Okanagan is exceptionally diverse ecologically,” says Dr. Ford, an Associate Professor of Biology in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science and the Canada Research Chair in Wildlife Restoration Ecology (Tier 2).

“We have salmon swimming in large lakes right beside a desert with cacti and rattlesnakes, grasslands with badgers, and within a 60-minute drive you can be above the tree line in an alpine meadow with mountain goats and grizzly bears. It’s also a vibrant, food rich and urban place—one of the fastest-growing communities in Canada because people want to be here. It’s beautiful.”

With that agricultural and urban growth comes challenges to biodiversity, such as water limitations, development through wildlife corridors and the shrinkage of rare grasslands.

Plants have returned to the site of the devastating 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park fire, and this area now supports a vibrant wildlife community. Between the City of Kelowna and the fire are many agricultural operations, including fruit orchards and vineyards, making this land some of the highest valued real estate in Canada.

As the new Director of the Okanagan Institute for Biodiversity, Resilience and Ecosystem Services (BRAES), Dr. Ford wants the institute—and UBC Okanagan—to support local communities, land, wildlife and water, offering research that helps build a more sustainable way of life in the Okanagan.

BRAES is one of five research institutes at UBC Okanagan, funded by the Office of the Vice-Principal, Research and Innovation to provide opportunities for researchers to collaborate and share knowledge across disciplines and into the community.

As the head of BRAES, Dr. Ford hopes to strengthen the institute’s research support network. His priorities include strong regional partnerships and speaking to the need for reconciliation, including support for indigenizing research programs and partnering with Indigenous communities, particularly in the Syilx territory where UBC Okanagan is located.

His background has positioned him well for the new role.

Community leaders from Esk’etemc First Nation, BC Wildfire Service, non-governmental organizations and BRAES researchers gather to plan cultural and prescribed fire in the Cariboo region. Indigenous-led fire management is helping to reinvigorate cultural practices and restore populations of wildlife species like bighorn sheep, elk and mule deer.

Dr. Ford leads the Wildlife Restoration Ecology (WiRE) Lab, where he studies how human activity in landscapes affects interactions between large predators, prey and plants. The key goal of this work is restoration—the human-assisted recovery of nature. To do this, he and his lab partner with governments, Indigenous communities and other organizations to help people and wildlife co-exist more peacefully.

His past and ongoing research projects include an award-winning study of the tripling of a mountain caribou herd under Indigenous-led stewardship, informing on human/wildlife conflict with wolves in coastal BC and bears in the Rocky Mountains, and assessing the functionality of wildlife corridors in BC—or, areas set aside from human development to allow animals to move through the habitat.

“Dr. Ford brings energy, creativity and extensive research experience to the leadership of BRAES,” says Dr. Phil Barker, Vice-Principal, Research and Innovation. “His work in conservation and regional collaborations are a perfect fit for the BRAES mandate, and I am looking forward to seeing how he will use this role to benefit not just the institute and our campus, but the wider sustainability conversation in the Okanagan.”

While many researchers in BRAES are biologists like Dr. Ford, interdisciplinarity is one of the institute’s key strengths.

As an indicator species, mule deer are the “canary in the coalmine” that tells researchers about the health of the landscape. Dr. Ford helps lead the province’s largest mule deer study to date—the Southern Interior Mule Deer project—involving several graduate students, hundreds of trail cameras and GPS tracking of deer migrations.

BRAES connects researchers across disciplines, from biology to computational statistics to the humanities. For Dr. Ford, these diverse skills are essential to solving complex problems like climate change and sustainability.

“The world is a complicated place, and we need a lot of different ways of knowing to help solve these problems,” he says. “Western science can be a helpful tool, but it’s just one tool in the toolbox. To solve complicated problems, we need a diverse set of tools.”

In the future, Dr. Ford dreams of UBC Okanagan researchers having access to field research facilities in the Okanagan, coordinating with community partners on long-term biodiversity monitoring for the valley and hiring an interdisciplinary postdoctoral fellow who could work across faculties in BRAES.

“You can look at the recent wildfires in the Okanagan and see the need for the work BRAES members do to support better decisions and give the landscape a voice,” says Dr. Ford. “We care about this community, and we’re doing work that we believe will help the Okanagan.”

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