Freelance writer Dan Falk penned an interesting story for The Telegraph last month, reflecting on his experience as a judge in the Turing Test Marathon this summer: Will this summer be remembered as a turning point in the story of man versus machine? On June 23, with little fanfare, a computer program came within a hair’s breadth of passing the Turing test, a kind of parlour game for evaluating machine intelligence devised by mathematician Alan Turing more than 60 years ago.   This wasn’t as dramatic as Skynet becoming self-aware in the Terminator films, or HAL killing off his human crew mates in 2001, A Space Odyssey. But it was still a sign that machines are […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF), together with the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), today announced the U.S.-Israel Collaboration in Computer Science (USICCS), which seeks to support collaborative research projects that “develop new knowledge” in foundational areas of computer science, including the theory of computing and the foundations of software design and systems. In particular, through this program, “U.S.-based researchers will receive funds from NSF to support travel to Israel to interact with their Israeli counterparts.” Proposals are due by Feb. 1, 2013. According to the solicitation (following the link):

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Jenny Korn, a Ph.D. student in communications at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Korn was one of the participants of last week’s 2012 Summer Social Webshop on Technology-Mediated Social Participation, co-organized by Alan Neustadtl, Jennifer Preece, and Ben Shneiderman, faculty at the University of Maryland at College Park, as well as Marc Smith of the Social Media Research Foundation. Chosen from more than 100 applications, 50 doctoral students gathered at the University of Maryland last week for the Summer Social Webshop (the website includes videos of presentations!). The well-crafted presentations triggered lively discussions at the intersection of social media and network analysis. We represented many disciplines, including communications, sociology, information science, […]

Earlier this month, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced a new initiative that aims “to break the status quo of digital processing” by investigating new ways of “non-digital” computation that are “fundamentally different from current digital processors and the power and speed limitations associated with them.” Called Unconventional Processing of Signals for Intelligent Data Exploitation, or UPSIDE, the initiative specifically seeks “a new, ultra-low power processing method [that] may enable faster, mission-critical analysis of [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR)] data.” According to the DARPA announcement (after the jump):

On Sept. 28 and 29, the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) — a partnership of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Maryland — will convene a workshop on Quantum Information Science in Computer and Natural Sciences at the Marriott Inn and Conference Center in College Park, MD. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in connection with its recent interdisciplinary faculty program in quantum information science, this workshop is part of a broader effort to respond to the January 2009 National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) report on “A Federal Vision for Quantum Information Science.” We are interested in bringing the computer science and mathematics community to look more closely at […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Suchi Saria, a 2011 Computing Innovation Fellow who recently joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in computer science as well as health policy and management. Suchi co-led the organization of the second annual symposium on Meaningful Use of Complex Medical Data (MUCMD) in Los Angeles, CA, with Randall Wetzel, professor of anesthesiology at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Our growing health care need is one of the largest looming crises of our time. In the United States, per capita spending in health care constitutes the highest in the world and almost twice that of the country ranked second. However, our […]