Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has made huge strides in the past decade. A large part of this progress can be attributed to large quantities of accessible datasets and computing resources. Recently many federal agencies have started to invest in leveraging commercial cloud computing resources to advance AI/ML research and development (R&D). The White House’s National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and AI Subcommittee just released a report on Lessons Learned from Federal Use of Cloud Computing to Support AI Research and Development summarizing lessons learned from Federal agencies on the use of cloud computing to further AI R&D. The report came about from another Federal Government’s Select Committee […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is pleased to announce the release of a new CCC workshop report called Content Generation for Workforce Training. This report is based on presentations and discussions at the CCC workshop Content Generation for Workforce Training that was held March 14-15, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia, and a follow-up workshop by the same name held July 28, 2019 at the ACM SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles. The workshops brought together researchers in a variety of computer disciplines related to content creation and practitioners in workforce training. Efficient workforce training is needed in today’s world in which technology is continually changing the nature of work. Students need to […]

The following blog was written by Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Chair Mark D. Hill from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Due to technology challenges and potential societal benefits, NSF has provided sustained funding for issues surrounding effective scaling of parallel and distributed computing, including through the Exploiting Parallelism and Scalability (XPS) Program, begun in 2012, and the Scalable Parallelism in the Extreme (SPX) Program, started in 2016. To illuminate directions in this area, NSF commissioned a workshop held in June 2019 as part of the Federated Computing Research Conference and led by Michael Carbin of MIT and Scott D. Stoller of Stony Brook University. The workshop report was recently issued. […]

Last week, we shared the National Security Commission on AI‘s Interim Report as well as details about the corresponding conference held on November 6, Strength Through Innovation: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of U.S. National Security. The Commission now welcomes feedback and is looking forward to continuing to engage with the community as they move into the analysis and recommendation phase of the Commission’s work. To that end, they will be holding a series of teleconferences to provide a deeper dive into the interim report content and gather your feedback. Please join them on one of the following dates for these discussions: LOE 1: Invest in AI R&D, Thursday, November 21, […]

I recently linked my child’s smart robot toy to the Internet. Did I feel a little strange about it? Yes. But was giving the robot the ability to play “Baby Shark” and dance to it while making my child laugh, worth it the risk? Yes, I thought, until I saw this… Recently, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released an informational report called Considerations for Managing Internet of Things (IoT) Cybersecurity and Privacy Risks (NISTIR 8228). This is the first in a planned series of documents NIST is developing to help IoT users protect themselves, their data and their networks from potential compromise. Developed by the NIST Cybersecurity for IoT […]

Significant contributions to this post were provided by Computing Community Consortium (CCC) council member Juliana Freire from NYU. When a new exciting discovery is announced in our field, can we trust it? How was it produced? What data and code was used? How accurate are the results? Can they be reproduced? Recently, Congress1 directed the National Science Foundation (NSF) to contract with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) to “undertake a study to assess reproducibility and replicability in scientific and engineering research and to provide findings and recommendations for improving rigor and transparency in research.” An interdisciplinary committee of fifteen members, including CCC Council Member Juliana Freire, […]