BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:researchseminars.org CALSCALE:GREGORIAN X-WR-CALNAME:researchseminars.org BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Brendan Fong (Topos Institute) DTSTART:20250829T153000Z DTEND:20250829T163000Z DTSTAMP:20260422T171849Z UID:CompMath/17 DESCRIPTION:Title: Abstractions for Real People\nby Brendan Fong (Topos Institute) as p art of Relatorium seminar\n\n\nAbstract\nComputing is built on abstraction s. Abstractions forget details\, so that we can focus on what is important . What happens\, however\, when we forget something of value? I argue that certain risks and fears around AI today result from action informed by ab stractions that diverge from what matters in their context of use. Moreove r\, I suggest that building better societal practices of abstraction is a task to which mathematicians – especially category theorists – are wel l placed to contribute. To begin a conversation\, I envision a practice of abstraction that prizes accessibility\, responsiveness\, and pluralism. I 'll illustrate this practice via ongoing work at Topos\, especially our co llaborative modelling platform CatColab.\n\nbio: Brendan Fong serves as th e founding chief executive of Topos Institute\, an international research nonprofit building tools for collective sense-making. He is co-author of t extbook An Invitation to Applied Category Theory\, serves on the steering committee of the Adjoint School\, served as a founding executive editor of the open access journal Compositionality\, and co-directed the Inaugural Singapore Conference on AI for the Global Good. He received a DPhil in Com puter Science from Oxford\, with postdoctoral training at UPenn and MIT.\n \nModerator bio: The talk will be moderated by Priyaa Varshinee Srinivasan . Priyaa is a postdoctoral fellow at the Tallinn University of Technology\ , and a former colleague of Brendan (the speaker). She specializes in appl ied category theory specializing in quantum sciences. Her vision is for ev eryone to experience the joy of mathematics in their own way.\n LOCATION:https://researchseminars.org/talk/CompMath/17/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR