In 2021, the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) celebrated their 70th anniversary with two big events: the Future of Computing Symposium (October 2021) and the AI and Social Responsibility Symposium (March 2022). The CSL is an Interdisciplinary Research Unit (IRU) in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with a rich history of scientific and engineering advances. It brings together researchers from computing, communication, control, circuits, and beyond. CSL’s research covers the full computing stack, from circuits and high-performance applications to signal processing, machine learning, security and trust, and computing’s impact on society and the resulting need for social responsibility. The CSL recently released a white […]

Transformative advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technology require large amounts of accurate, comprehensive data. There is a widening disparity between the types and amounts of datasets that organizations have access to. This not only hinders research, but widens the knowledge gap between entities. A commonly talked about solution is developing an open source knowledge structure that will be available to everyone and house a wide diversity of data to help address pressing issues such as economic growth, climate change, misinformation, pandemic prevention etc. Last week the National Science Foundation (NSF) released an “Open Knowledge Network Roadmap Report” as a guide towards realizing this type of infrastructure. In February through […]

Pending funding, the National Institute of Health (NIH) plans to launch the Bridge to Artificial Intelligence (Bridge2AI) program. Collaboratively managed by the NIH Common Fund, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the National Eye Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, and the National Library of Medicine, the program seeks to provide comprehensive, high-quality and ethically sourced datasets to catalyze the widespread use of AI in the biomedical and behavioral research communities. AI has the ability to transform the biomedical and behavioral science fields. Possible applications include informing clinical decision making, monitoring and predicting health needs in real time and […]

Edge artificial intelligence (AI) is the deployment of AI devices at the edge of networks, in other words these devices are collecting and computing data close to the user. An example of this is a self-driving car. Data pertaining to the proximity of other cars, traffic and obstacles are being collected and computed by the car rather than in a cloud computing facility or private data center. These technological capabilities enable organizations to increase automation and improve processes, efficiency and safety. Currently these edge devices are limited by their battery power. A massive amount of the technology’s energy goes towards moving the data between the compute unit (where the data […]

The Center Security and Emerging Technology just launched the Country Activity Tracker (CAT), an interactive tool that portrays countries’ level of tech competitiveness and collaboration. Many countries are in the race for Artificial Intelligence (AI), making massive investments in research and infrastructure to remain competitive in the tech sphere. The United States is no exception, with many policies and initiatives geared towards remaining the world leader in tech and AI. CAT collects data and presents metrics on AI research, patents and investment-related activities in AI across the globe. Researchers and policy makers can use CAT to examine other countries’ AI ecosystems, compare metrics and progress between countries’ and explore opportunities […]

While many of the achievements of AI scientists, especially in the field of language dialogue application, seemed impossible 20 years ago, it isn’t unrealistic to think that AI can perform in ways only seen in movies. AI systems have or will soon have the capacity to execute human tasks like writing, driving, and analyzing data. AI systems are constantly looking and acting more human, so are they becoming human? According to the vast majority of AI scientists, the answer is no. However, Google engineer Blake Lemoine has made headlines in recent days by insisting that LaMDA, short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, is sentient. Lemoine goes as far as […]