1. TIME AND VENUE 

Time  

Venue 

About 35 YSEALI fellows who are young professionals between ages of 25-40, highly qualified and motivated, from all 10 ASEAN member states and Timor-Leste.  
 

Participants are required to commit at least 36 hours for online seminar activities and approximately 12 additional hours for individual and group assignments over a period of 2 weeks. Therefore, participants are highly recommended to take two fully committed weeks to participate productively in and achieve the most from the seminar. 

3. OBJECTIVES AND LEARNING OUTCOME 

Objectives  

Learning outcomes 

Upon graduation, participants will be able to critique new A.I. tools and how they are being used to create trustworthy relationships between and among people and machines.  The fellows will learn, through example, how society has been impacted by these tools, both beneficially and negatively.  More generally, the fellows are expected to have skills to critique and carefully adopt current A.I. technologies as well as the ones they will encounter in the future. 

 4. THEME AND TOPICS 

Major theme – The Digitization of Trust (for 2022) 

Every day on the internet, we interact with technology that attempts to gain our trust and influence our decisions.  A.I. tools, while promising to be trustworthy helpers, have also become powerful tools for manipulating and synthesizing media.  New tools like blockchain are promising the full and seamless automation of trust.  In this seminar, the participating YSEALI Fellows will discuss and explore how to take control of these tools to address the unique digital challenges of the region while mitigating the risks posed by the same tools. 

Seminar topics 

Topic 1 – Understanding the Bias of A.I. and Its Influence on Decision Making 

This topic enlightens the young leaders on the non-neutrality of A.I. tools and how bias is embedded to serve the purpose of the owner.  This bias is used to influence the minds of decision makers, therefore making it necessary for users to be proactive in dissecting new apps and tools.  As the world is moving towards automation, we discuss what human tasks can be entrusted to A.I. and which one should not be. 

5. SEMINAR FORMAT AND STRUCTURE 

 1. Seminar format  

As the 2022 seminar is conducted wholly online, it will be delivered in diverse formats to maximize the engagement of participants, including faculty lectures, guest talk/presentation, panel discussion, team projects (discussed below) and class discussion.  

Team project: participants will work in a team and deliver a presentation on issues relevant to the seminar topics. Comparative and cross-nation analyses and views are encouraged as they will benefit all participants with practical, diverse and updated perspectives of the current state of technology and innovation in Southeast Asia. 

 2. Structure (tentative) 

There are a total of 23 sessions in two weeks (Monday – Friday), 2 sessions /day (morning, afternoon or evening).  

Due to the time zone constraint (with international speakers), the seminar is mostly conducted in the afternoons and evenings. The 90-minute evening sessions are lectures; the 2-hour afternoon sessions include guest talks, panel discussion, leadership workshop or participants’ teamwork. The seminar schedule is based on Hanoi/Bangkok time (11 hours ahead of Boston).  

Learning Outcomes: What skills will the fellows develop in the seminar? 

Team A.I. Workshops 

A.I. Workshop #1:  Hello, Agent! 

 Teams will create an A.I. agent and dramatize its daily activities as it helps and influences an organization.  

A.I. Workshop #2: Two Truths and a Lie 

 Each team will create a deepfake media and let other teams guess it apart from real media. 

 A.I. Workshop #3: The Crystal Ball 

 Each team will make its best attempt to predict future technology and how it will impact society. 

Team Project 

Seminar structure