Computing technologies have revolutionized the world, from how we grow food to our social interactions. At the core of this revolution is computing hardware, the shrinking of which has allowed for powerful computation in the palm of your hand. Unfortunately, Moore’s law is coming to an end and we will no longer be able to build more powerful computers using traditional CMOS-based hardware. What other bases for computing hardware are out there? The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) organized the Next Generation Computer Hardware scientific session at the 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual meeting in February to discuss this topic and share some potential avenues for future research. […]

Over the last twenty years, the proliferation of Internet access, coupled with the explosion of online social networks, has allowed people around the world to share their ideas and experiences with the click of a button. Beauty vloggers craft YouTube tutorials, gamers stream their performances live over Twitch, and journalists share and source news from across the world through Twitter. This web of content is always expanding—much of the information within it is true, however, plenty of it is not. How can we determine fact from fiction in this rapidly shifting information landscape? In response to these emerging concerns the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) organized the Detecting, Combating, and Identifying […]

The last decade has seen the increased use of machine learning and data science to make decisions—from figuring out which YouTube video to recommend to deciding whom to give a loan, automated decisions are now everywhere. However, as deployment of these decision-making systems has increased so too have concerns about the transparency of the component algorithms and the fairness of their outcomes. This topic was the subject of the New Approaches to Fairness in Automated Decision Making scientific session at the 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual meeting in Seattle, Washington one month ago. The session was moderated by Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Director Ann Schwartz Drobnis and included: Sampath […]

As the global population continues to grow, and climate change and pollution lead to environmental degradation, ensuring the future of agriculture and food production becomes increasingly imperative. What role can computing research play in alleviating these challenges going forward? The impact of computing technology on the future of agriculture and plant science was the subject of the Using Computing to Sustainably Feed a Growing Populations scientific session at the 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual meeting in Seattle, Washington one month ago. This session was moderated by Lucas Joppa, the Chief Environmental Officer at Microsoft, and co-organized by Shashi Shekhar (CRA Board Member) and James Hodson (AI for Good […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is proud to be a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2020 Annual Meeting taking place February 12-16, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. This year the CCC is supporting five scientific sessions at the AAAS Annual Meeting in addition to two communications and outreach opportunities. Learn more about each of the sessions below. New Approaches to Fairness in Automated Decision Making Friday, February 14th 8:00 – 9:30 AM Synopsis: Critical decisions are increasingly being made by machine-learning algorithms based on massive data trails that people all leave behind. Such decisions affect issues from college admissions and bank loans, to sentencing and police deployment. Concerns have been raised […]

There’s less than two weeks left to apply for the 2020-2021 cohort of AAAS Leshner Leadership Fellows! This program convenes mid-career scientists who demonstrate leadership in their research careers and in promoting meaningful dialogue between science and society. Each year, 15 Leshner Fellows from disciplines at the nexus of important science-society issues convene for a week of public engagement and science communication training and public engagement plan development in Washington, DC, then continue their activities while at their home institutions during the fellowship year. The 2020-2021 cohort will be comprised of active researchers in the field of artificial intelligence, new and emerging technologies that seek to replicate, mimic or augment human […]