On October 24, 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine‘s Forum on Aging, Disability, and Independence will host a workshop in Washington, DC that will explore the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to foster a balance of safety and autonomy for older adults and people with disabilities who strive to live as independently as possible.  AI offers the possibility to greatly benefit Americans who are older than 65 or those who are living with a disability. AI systems present the potential for improving accessibility and transportation systems; increasing social connections; and lowering health care costs. However, there is a significant lack of evidence about the impact of such technologies, which points to a need […]

Last Thursday, Politico held an AI Summit: Innovation and Governance as “a global leadership gathering of policymakers, business leaders and experts for solutions-driven conversations on the impact of AI on governments, industries and society.” Some notable government participants included Representative Will Hurd (Texas), France Córdova (National Science Foundation), and Stacy Dixon (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity). In his opening remarks, Hurd said that we need to “double down on basic research.”  The problem with basic research is that “often times it is hard to understand the return on investment of basic research. People believe the government should have the same returns as venture capital, private equity, but that’s just not possible. […]

The following is a Request for Information (RFI) from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.  The Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO), within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, announces an RFI seeking feedback from industry, academia, research laboratories, government agencies, and other stakeholders regarding research opportunities associated with applying machine learning techniques toward challenges in the geosciences that are relevant to geothermal energy. With respect to the overall goals of establishing the practice of machine learning in the geothermal industry and maximizing the value of the rich datasets available to the geosciences, GTO is seeking input in three areas: Identifying […]

Shwetak Patel, from the University of Washington, contributed to this post.  Would you like to know how much energy your living room TV is using when it is running? What about when how much it uses while still plugged in and turned “off”? How about checking to see if your newborn baby has jaundice using your smartphone? Would that be helpful? All these practical applications are now possible using a smart sensor in the home and on your phone. The National Science Foundation Science Nation recently went to the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) council member Shwetak Patel’s lab to learn how to use smart sensors to create a breakdown of […]

CCC Council member Maja Mataric from the University of Southern California provided contributions to this post. If we train Artificial Intelligence (AI) to do our work for us it will still need to be periodically checked for errors and random noise. This detailed human oversight is not something we can skip. As AI has more and more power, it will also have more responsibility and the decisions it makes could be deadly if incorrect. We still have so much to learn about building machines that could potentially make life-altering decisions, and we cannot predict what kinds of serious engineering flaws will occur in the future. Michael I. Jordan from the […]

On March 12th-14th, the National Academies of Science held an Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia on Creativity and Collaboration: Revisiting Cybernetic Serendipity. The colloquia, organized by Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland), Maneesh Agrawala (Stanford), Alyssa Goodman (Harvard), Youngmoo Kim (Drexel), and Roger Malina (UT Dallas), examined the historical framework of cybernetic serendipity –the concept of unplanned creation derived from cybernetic processes. The term is derived from an exhibition of cybernetic art curated by Jasia Reichardt that toured touring the United States in the late 1960s. The colloquia attempted to answer: “How should we re-envision research policy and educational structures to maximize the impact of partnerships with design, art, and humanities? How can we productively engage […]