The MacArthur Foundation recently announced its 2022 MacArthur Fellows – 25 individuals whose achievements show “new modes of activism, artistic practice, and citizen science. They are excavators uncovering what has been overlooked, undervalued, or poorly understood. They are archivists reminding us of what should survive.” The MacArthur Fellows program grants each recipient a no-strings attached stipend of $800,000 in order to support his or her own creative and professional ambitions. The program features scientists, artists, historians, and writers. Among the new Fellows is Computer scientist Yejin Choi. Dr. Choi is currently the Brett Helsel Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington at Seattle, […]

This Wednesday, Oct 12, from 3:10pmET-4:30pmET, Barbara Grosz is giving a Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (SRI) Seminar Series talk. Her talk is titled “Fostering responsible computing research,” and will be followed by interactive discussions in virtual breakout rooms. Grosz is the lead researcher on a recently conducted National Academies’ Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) study on the ethical and societal impacts of computer science, and she will be presenting the major findings in the pre-publication report. CCC posted a blog earlier this summer on the CSTB report. In her talk, Grosz will outline tangible steps research institutions can take in order to be more considerate of […]

The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recently released a “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights.” The goal of the AI Bill of Rights is to provide a set of policies and regulations to protect against potentially harmful consequences of artificial intelligence. The expectations set in the blueprint invite a plethora of research opportunities within the computer science community. Former CCC Council Member, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, was very involved in the initial groundwork of this initiative. You can read more about the blueprint in the article posted on the Computing Research Policy Blog below. Originally written by Brian Mosley and posted on the Computing Research Policy Blog The Biden […]

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 […]