The Societal Risks of AI

Date: Tuesday, June 30th, 2026 Location: Online Only

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AI safety, once a niche concern, is now a topic that the average person has heard of, but many remain unaware of the specifics and what can be done to safeguard against these new threats.

This webinar explores AI safety as both a technical and societal challenge. On the technical side, issues such as robustness, alignment, interpretability, and controllability raise fundamental questions about how we design systems that behave as intended. On the societal side, concerns around misuse, systemic bias, economic disruption, and governance highlight the broader implications of deploying AI at scale. These dimensions are deeply interconnected: technical design choices can have far-reaching social consequences, while policy decisions can shape the trajectory of technical development.

Join Dr. Robert Slone, a featured speaker, recently appointment to the faculty of Notre Dame’s Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society and other featured speakers at this free webinar providing a structured overview of key problems, current approaches, and open research directions in AI safety.

Speakers

• Andrew Draganov, Research Lead and Program Manager for Alignment Research at Arcadia Impact
• Robert Sloane, PhD, Senior Vice President and Chief Scientist at UL Solutions
• Sarah Kreps, Cornell Professor of Government and Law, and Director of the Tech Policy Institute at the Brooks School of Public Policy

Moderator

• Nicholas Dirks, PhD, The New York Academy of Sciences President and CEO