The Centre for Law, Technology and Society is the leading Canadian research group in law, ethics and policy of technology. In welcoming Dr. Millar, the Centre strengthens its policy and technology expertise. It now includes 22 full-time regular professors – from the Faculty of Arts, Engineering, Law, and Social Sciences – and 9 associate members teaching and researching law and policy in the fields of technology, innovation, security, privacy, information, communication, intellectual property, science, and traditional knowledge.
Dr. Jason Millar is the most recent hire in the Faculty of Engineering’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science as an Assistant Professor in the Ethical Engineering of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.
Dr. Millar is an engineer and philosopher who spends most of his time thinking about the design, ethics and governance of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). He is currently researching various ethics and governance issues in the design of robotics and AI (e.g. driverless cars, medical devices, military systems, and social robots). He is developing philosophically grounded frameworks for use in ethically evaluating robotics and AI technologies in design and policy contexts.
Dr. Millar earned a B.Sc.E. (Engineering Physics) from Queen’s University and worked as an engineer designing Information and communications technologies (ICTs) and aerospace electronics for several years prior to returning to academia to complete a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, and then a Ph.D. in Applied Ethics from Queen’s University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Law, Technology and Society and the Faculty of Law under the supervision of Dr. Ian Kerr. Until his recruitment to the Faculty of Engineering, he was an Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Fellow at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University.
Dr. Millar has authored and co-authored several academic articles and book chapters on the ethics and governance of robotics and AI. He has given expert testimony on the ethics of Lethal Autonomous Weapons to both the United Nations (Geneva) and the Senate of Canada. His work has appeared in popular publications such as Wired and The Conversation (UK). It has also been featured in international media outlets such as the CBC, BBC, The Guardian, The National Post and NPR. He has also authored, and co-authored, technology policy reports for Transport Canada, Health Canada and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.