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, […]

We live in a new world. A world where information can spread fast and without any regard to accuracy. Our challenge as individual citizens is to somehow identify the disinformation from the actual information. Kate Starbird and her team from the University of Washington spend time studying this problem and the impact disinformation can have on society. Starbird recently gave a keynote address at the National Science Foundation 2019 Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Principal Investigator’s Meeting (SaTC PI meeting ’19) in Alexandria, VA on “Bots and Trolls” — Understanding Disinformation as Collaborative Work. As Starbird said in her talk: Disinformation is not simply false information or just about “bots” or […]

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 following is a message to the community from the Computing Research Association (CRA) Executive Director Andrew Bernat.  Dear Colleague, I am pleased to announce that CRA’s Career Mentoring Workshop will take place February 27-28, 2020, in Washington, DC. The application link is here. The deadline to apply (for guaranteed attendance for CRA member institution participants) is October 31st. Appropriate participants from CRA-member institutions are automatically accepted (until we run out of physical space); we will accept participants from non-CRA member institutions if there is space (at a higher registration fee).If you have attended or know someone who has, then you know that this workshop gets raves as a kickstart […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Transportation (DoT), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) just announced a new solicitation, titled National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Institutes: Accelerating Research, Transforming Society, and Growing the American Workforce, with the goal to “significantly advance research in AI and accelerate the development of transformational, AI-powered innovation by allowing researchers to focus on larger-scale, longer-term research.” The National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes program anticipates approximately $120 million in grants next year to fund eight planning grants and up to six research institutes in order to advance AI […]