Significant contributions were provided by CRA Director of Government Affairs Peter Harsha and CCC Director Ann Schwartz Drobnis.   Yesterday at a conference of the National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI) in DC, a bipartisan collection of Congressional and agency leaders spoke of the urgent need for the United States to retain its leadership role in Artificial Intelligence in the face of dramatically increased competition from U.S. adversaries. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), noting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declaration that the nation that leads AI will rule the world, affirmed the priority he believes AI research and education ought to enjoy by teasing a legislative proposal that would create a new […]

Contributions to this post were provided by CCC Chair Mark D. Hill from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and CCC Executive Committee Member Nadya Bliss from Arizona State University. The leadership of the Department of Defense (DoD) tasked the Defense Innovation Board (DIB) with proposing Artificial Intelligence (AI) Ethics Principles for DoD for the design, development, and deployment of AI for both combat and non-combat purposes.  “The mission of the DIB is to provide the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and other senior leaders across the Department with independent advice and recommendations on innovative means to address future challenges through the prism of three focus areas: people and culture, […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) recently released the Thermodynamic Computing workshop report, the output of the CCC’s January 2019 visioning workshop of the same name. The workshop was organized by Tom Conte (Georgia Tech), Erik DeBenedictis (former Sandia National Laboratories), Natesh Ganesh (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Todd Hylton (UC San Diego), Susanne Still (University of Hawaii), John Paul Strachan (Hewlett Packard Lab HPE), R. Stanley Williams (Texas A&M). It brought together physical theorists, electrical and computer engineers, electronic/ionic device researchers, and theoretical biologists to explore a novel idea: computing as an open thermodynamic system. The report begins by explaining the need for thermodynamic computers: with the end of Moore’s Law and Dennard […]

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) new solicitation, titled National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Institutes: Accelerating Research, Transforming Society, and Growing the American Workforce, has a program webinar on November 7th, 2019 at 3:30-4:30 PM ET. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has advanced tremendously and today promises personalized healthcare; enhanced national security; improved transportation; and more effective education, to name just a few benefits. Increased computing power, the availability of large datasets and streaming data, and algorithmic advances in machine learning (ML) have made it possible for AI development to create new sectors of the economy and revitalize industries. Continued advancement, enabled by sustained federal investment and channeled toward issues of national importance, holds the […]

The MacArthur Foundation recently announced its 2019 MacArthur Fellows – “26 extraordinary MacArthur Fellows demonstrate the power of individual creativity to reframe old problems, spur reflection, create new knowledge, and better the world for everyone. They give us reason for hope, and they inspire us all to follow our own creative instincts.” The MacArthur Fellows program grants each recipient a no-strings-attached stipend of $625,000 in order to support his or her own creative and professional ambitions. The program features scientists, artists, historians, and writers. The 2019 Fellows class features one computer scientist: Joshua Tenanbaum, a Cognitive Scientist in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. […]

The 7th Annual Hot Topics in the Science of Security (HoTSoS) Symposium recently released a call for papers. This year’s HoTSoS Symposium will be held April 7-8, 2020 at the Burge Union on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, Kansas. “HoTSoS is a research event centered on the Science of Security, which aims to address the fundamental problems of security in a principled manner.” The call also asks for poster and tutorial submissions. The full call can be found below and learn more on the HoTSoS website. Overview Submissions are solicited for the 7th Annual Hot Topics in the Science of Security (HoTSoS) Symposium, which will be held April 7-8, […]