Selected Writing
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Scholarly
Nadia Ady & Faun Rice, Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Creativity, June 2023
The word creativity originally described a concept from human psychology, but in the realm of computational creativity (CC), it has become much more. The question of what creativity means when it is part of a computational system might be considered core to CC. Pinning down the meaning of creativity, and concepts like it, becomes salient when researchers port concepts from human psychology to computation, a widespread practice extending beyond CC into artificial intelligence (AI). Yet, the human processes shaping human-inspired computational systems have been little investigated. In this paper, we question which human literatures (social sciences, psychology, neuroscience) enter AI scholarship and how they are translated at the port of entry.
Faun Rice & Trevor Quan, Journal of International Migration and Integration, June 2023
Canada has long sought to disperse skilled immigration across the country, with the goal of promoting economic development, improving cultural diversity, and mitigating population decline. The Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs) are one mechanism for achieving regionalized immigration: they allow Canadian provinces and territories to use labor market information (LMI) to identify in-demand skills and offer visas to newcomers who match local needs. However, even when LMI is accurate, many factors can prevent newcomer access to local labor markets.
Building Human Rights into Intelligent Community Design: Beyond Procurement
Phil Dawson, Faun Rice, & Maya Watson, Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy, Spring 2022
Cities have emerged as test beds for digital innovation. At the same, there is a rising public awareness that without clear guidelines or sufficient safeguards, data collection and use in both public and private spaces can lead to negative impacts on a broad spectrum of human rights and freedoms.
Sarah Shulist & Faun Rice, Language Documentation & Conservation, February 2019
This paper addresses the gaps between language documentation and language revitalization. It is intended for several audiences, including field linguists interested in supporting endangered language sustainability efforts and participants of all kinds in language revitalization courses, programs, and infrastructure.
Popular
Why AI-assisted Literature Reviews Currently Fall Short
The Important Work, March 2025
For some researchers, the traditional, labor-intensive method of conducting systematic keyword searches is being supplemented—or even replaced—by AI-powered software like Perplexity Deep Research, ScholarGPT (a custom ChatGPT for open-access scholarly materials) and Elicit. These tools promise to streamline literature reviews by identifying and summarizing relevant information. If we could trust AI tools to search exhaustively, identify relevant material, and summarize it, we’d get back many hours of our lives. But can we trust AI tools to perform well, especially regarding niche topics?
What is the Equivalent of Grounding Planes in the Tech Sector?
Tech Policy Press, May 2025
One evening in May 2018, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, a grandmother of seven and a pro wrestling fan, pushed her bike across a road in Arizona near Tempe Town. Earlier that day, Rafaela Vasquez, an Uber operator and former driver, had checked in for her shift. Uber was testing its new autonomous vehicle prototype. Vasquez’s job was to monitor Uber’s systems to ensure that sensors were working correctly, while keeping an eye on the road. Faun Rice reviews Darryl Campbell’s Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software, published by W.W. Norton on April 8, 2025.
Information & Communications Technology Council (ICTC), September 2024
Budget 2024 describes $25 billion in agreements with provinces and territories to invest in stronger universal public health care, in party by building digital infrastructure such as electronic health records, e-referral services, and virtual care tools. However, many healthcare providers do not feel their degrees have prepared them to use digital health tools and do not feel there is an easy way to integrate this training into their busy professional lives.
A Tale of Two Consultations: Meaningful Engagement for Technology in the Public Sphere
IT World Canada, June 2021
Sidewalk Toronto, a proposed “smart city” development in the Toronto Quayside neighbourhood, was cancelled on May 7, 2020. Some commentators saw the withdrawal not as a consequence of the pandemic, but as a failure of public consultation.
Greening AI: Rebooting the Environmental Harms of Machine Learning
Faun Rice & Akshay Kotak, Corporate Knights, April 2021
“Green AI” research – AI research that’s more environmentally friendly and inclusive – explores AI’s carbon footprint and ways to reduce it. Green AI researchers see a trend in machine learning (ML) toward programs that require increasing power and that favour accuracy over efficiency, resulting in big experiments run many times without attention to their digital carbon footprints.
Ideas That Shape Our Lives: Intellectual Property and Open Access
Tech Policy Press, March 2022
President Joseph Biden, economist Mariana Mazzucato, and other public figures contend that vaccine patent holders should waive their IP rights for the greater good. Others, including the President of the World Bank David Malpass, argue that IP waivers, even temporary ones, would reduce the profit motive companies need to iterate and scale rapidly.
The Global Turn to Cash Transfers: CERB, EI, UBI, and Other Acronyms Shaping Our Financial Future
Medium, April 2020
Before March 2020, the Canadian public probably would have rebelled at the idea of a program that delivered a full-time minimum wage to 20% of the population without requiring them to demonstrate that they couldn’t find a job. A global pandemic has created an ideological shift where many of us are suddenly very empathetic with the unemployed — and this gives Canada an opportunity to trial unprecedented policies and ask some never-before-possible questions, including: what happens when we just give people money?
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