The following blog post was written by CCC’s Addressing the Unforeseen Deleterious Impacts of Technology (AUDIT) Task Force Computing technologies of all stripes have brought enormous benefits to people’s lives, but also significant individual and societal harms. As these technologies become increasingly ubiquitous and powerful, we should expect the potential benefits and harms to grow as well. These shifts raise crucial questions about the foreseeability of impacts of the work of computing researchers and developers, as it is much easier to promote benefits and mitigate harms when they can be anticipated. We can ensure wide access (if beneficial), establish guardrails (if problematic), and much more, but only if we actually […]

Recent years have seen increased awareness of the potential negative impacts of computing technologies, and yet these harms are often unforeseen when the technology is first deployed. The CCC Council formed a task force on Addressing the Unforeseen Deleterious Impacts of Technology (AUDIT) to investigate possible harmful consequences of computing technology, to what extent these outcomes could have been mitigated or avoided, and who should be responsible for negative impacts. The task force, composed of Nadya Bliss, Kevin Butler, David Danks, Ufuk Topcu, and Matthew Turk, brings together diverse expertise across cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, data science, philosophy/ethics, computer vision, and autonomous systems. The group also spoke with multiple […]

In November 2023, CCC hosted a workshop on “The Future of Research on Social Technologies” in Washington, DC. The event, also supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, addressed the past, present and future of social technologies research. The workshop brought together over 50 information and computer scientists, social scientists, communication and journalism scholars, and policy experts. The workshop was organized by Motahhare Eslami (Carnegie Mellon University), Eric Gilbert (University of Michigan), and Sarita Schoenebeck (University of Michigan). The workshop organizers, along with nine workshop participants, wrote a fascinating workshop report based on workshop discussions that has been released today. The report explores what we do not know […]

Today, April 1, 2024, the CCC submitted a response to the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Request for Information (RFI) Related to Responsibilities on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. In the solicitation, DOE sought advice on their plan to carry out some of the responsibilities outlined for them in the October Executive order (E.O.), “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence”. The RFI response was written by the following CCC Council Members and staff: Nadya Bliss (Arizona State University), Haley Griffin (CCC), Michela Taufer (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), and Adam Wierman (California Institute of Technology). The authors were impressed with the DOE’s list […]

CCC supported three scientific sessions at this year’s AAAS Annual Conference, and in case you weren’t able to attend in person, we will be recapping each session. Today, we will summarize the highlights of the Q&A portion of the session, “Large Language Models: Helpful Assistants, Romantic Partners or Con Artists?” This panel, moderated by Dr. Maria Gini, CCC Council Member and Computer Science & Engineering professor at the University of Minnesota, featured Dr. Ece Kamar, Managing Director of AI Frontiers at Microsoft Research, Dr. Hal Daumé III, Computer Science professor at University of Maryland, and Dr. Jonathan May, Computer Science professor at University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute. Below […]

CCC supported three scientific sessions at this year’s AAAS Annual Conference, and in case you weren’t able to attend in person, we will be recapping each session. Today, we will summarize the highlights of the panelists presentations of the session, “Large Language Models: Helpful Assistants, Romantic Partners or Con Artists?” This panel, moderated by Dr. Maria Gini, CCC Council Member and Computer Science & Engineering professor at the University of Minnesota, featured Dr. Ece Kamar, Managing Director of AI Frontiers at Microsoft Research, Dr. Hal Daumé III, Computer Science professor at University of Maryland, and Dr. Jonathan May, Computer Science professor at University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute. Large […]