The following is a guest blog from CCC Member Tom Conte of Georgia Tech. A recent article in SCIENCE, authored by Charles E. Leiserson, Neil Thompson, Joel Emer, Bradley Kuszmaul, Butler Lampson, Daniel Sanchez and Tao Schardl,  entitled “There’s plenty of room at the Top: What will drive computer performance after Moore’s law?” discusses the way forward after the end of technology scaling.  (The title is a play on Richard Feynman’s 1959 address to the American Physical Society, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” wherein Feynman observed that miniaturization would lead to what we now call Moore’s Law.)  So, what comes after Moore’s Law?  The article discusses improvements in […]

In March 2020, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the first ten recipients of the NSF Program on Fairness in Artificial Intelligence in Collaboration with Amazon (FAI).  From the solicitation: NSF and Amazon are partnering to jointly support computational research focused on fairness in AI, with the goal of contributing to trustworthy AI systems that are readily accepted and deployed to tackle grand challenges facing society. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to transparency, explainability, accountability, potential adverse biases and effects, mitigation strategies, algorithmic advances, fairness objectives, validation of fairness, and advances in broad accessibility and utility. Funded projects will enable broadened acceptance of AI systems, helping […]

Contributions to this post were provided by Alexandra Chouldechova (Carnegie Mellon University), Sampath Kannan (University of Pennsylvania), and Aaron Roth (University of Pennsylvania).  The Computing Community Consortium held a workshop on Fair Representations and Fair Interactive Learning in 2018, which was led by Aaron Roth from University of Pennsylvania and Alexandra Chouldechova from Carnegie Mellon University. A group of 50 industry, academic, and government experts convened in Philadelphia to explore the roots of algorithmic bias. The workshop report has been highlighted on the front page of the May 2020 CACM Issue, which includes a snapshot of the report that interviewed both Roth and Chouldechova. We tend to believe that algorithmic […]

The following is a letter to the community from Margaret Martonosi Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) and Anne Kinney Assistant Director of the NSF Directorate Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS). Dear Colleagues: The field of quantum computing has seen substantial progress in recent years, with the development of next-generation quantum processors in the 50- to 100-qubit range. Realizing the promise of such processors requires significant capacity-building to prepare the next generation of quantum discoverers. In light of the quantum-computing developments in the private sector as well as the opportunity for further innovation in the academic setting, the National Science Foundation and […]

Significant contributions to this post were provided by former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member and current Computing Research Association (CRA) Board member Shashi Shekhar from the University of Minnesota and Computing Research Association (CRA) Board member Kate Larson from the University of Waterloo as a representative of the Info-Can/CS-CAN.  Fifty years ago on April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans, nearly 10% of the U.S. population at the time, took to the street, college campuses, and hundreds of cities to protest environmental ignorance and demand a new way forward for our planet. This first Earth Day launched a modern environmental movement to promote community action to address environmental challenges. Past […]

With input from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking, the National Science Foundation (NSF) recently published a new solicitation on Disrupting Operations of Illicit Supply Networks (D-ISN) “to support the research needed to inform the economy, security, and resilience of the Nation and the world in responding to the global threat posed by illicit supply networks.” The proposal deadline is July 1st, 2020.  Major goals of NSF’s D-ISN include: Improve understanding of the operations of illicit supply networks and strengthen the ability to detect, disrupt, and dismantle them. Enhance research communities that effectively integrate operational, computational, social, cultural and economic expertise to […]