The following Great Innovative Idea is from Yonatan Bisk, Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science and member of the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. The Idea Language learning requires physically existing in the world (not being just a brain in a jar). A child doesn’t learn language from reading Wikipedia.  They build rich models of the world by seeing and doing.  They understand other humans as socially intelligent and cooperative agents with whom to speak and from whom to learn.  Yet, natural language “understanding” systems have focused on training in an impoverished disembodied text-only setting — trying to download as much text off the internet and […]

Join us on Thursday, December 2, 2021, at 12pm EST for a special virtual event marking the 30th anniversary of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program. For three decades, the NITRD program has coordinated federal investment at the frontiers of computing, networking, data, and software, leading to many of the breakthrough information technologies that define our lives today, like the modern Internet as well as 4G, LTE, and 5G wireless networks, expanding access to broadband connectivity, information, and other resources; vehicle-to-vehicle communication, enhancing driver safety and reducing traffic congestion; and machine learning and predictive modeling, advancing understanding of human diseases like COVID-19 leading to therapeutics. Advance registration for the […]

Congress recently passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a bipartisan bill which includes $550 billion in new federal spending on infrastructure over five years. President Biden is scheduled to sign the bill into law today (November 13th).   While designed as a traditional infrastructure bill, an analysis of the legislation by the Computing Research Policy Blog found several sections that are of note to the research community and the computing research community specifically: A five-year, $100 million a year SMART grant program at the Department of Transportation (DOT); several intelligent transportation and smart communities pilot programs at DOT; a new ARPA program (ARPA-Infrastructure) at DOT; Division F, a large subsection […]

Join us on Thursday, December 2, 2021, at 12pm EST for a special virtual event marking the 30th anniversary of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program. For three decades, the NITRD program has coordinated federal investment at the frontiers of computing, networking, data, and software, leading to many of the breakthrough information technologies that define our lives today, like the modern Internet as well as 4G, LTE, and 5G wireless networks, expanding access to broadband connectivity, information, and other resources; vehicle-to-vehicle communication, enhancing driver safety and reducing traffic congestion; and machine learning and predictive modeling, advancing understanding of human diseases like COVID-19 leading to therapeutics. Advance […]

The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) put out a Request for Information (RFI) on uses of biometric technologies in the public and private sector. Concerns are growing with the increasing number of applications and domains using biometric information to determine identification or inference of emotion, disposition, character, or intent. As a result, OSTP is requesting input from interested parties past deployments, proposals, pilots, or trials, and current use of biometric technologies for the aforementioned purposes. In this case, a “biometric technology” is broadly referred to as a system that uses biometric information for the purpose of recognition or inference. Community responses will be used to understand the current landscape of […]

The National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Resource (NAIRR) Task Force convened its third virtual public meeting to further develop a vision and implementation plan for the NAIRR. Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member Ian Foster (Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago), was invited to speak about the recently published A National Discovery Cloud: Preparing the US for Global Competitiveness in the New Era of 21st Century Digital Transformation white paper.  In addition, 84 responses from industry, academia, and government stakeholders were recently released regarding the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation request for information to develop an implementation roadmap for the NAIRR. […]