ACM SIGAI Webinar: Enlichenment: Insights Towards AI Impact in Education through a Mycelial Partnership between Research, Policy, and Practice

Title: ACM SIGAI Webinar: Enlichenment: Insights Towards AI Impact in Education through a Mycelial Partnership between Research, Policy, and Practice

For Event Registration Please see the ACM Webinar Site: https://webinars.on24.com/acm/rose

Date: Thursday, June 24, 2021

Time: 12:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Duration: 1 hour

Summary: As we begin to emerge from COVID-19, in the face of tremendous learning loss and widening achievement gaps, we, as a society, are grappling with envisioning the future of education. In the field of Artificial Intelligence, we ask what our role might be in this emerging reality. This ACM SIGAI Learning Webinar will engage the audience in consideration of these issues in light of insights gained from recent research. Since the early 70s, the field of Artificial Intelligence and the fields of Human Learning and Teaching have partnered together to study how to use technology to understand and support human learning. Nevertheless, despite tremendous growth in these fields over the decades, and notable large-scale success, the emergency move to universal online learning at all levels over the past year has exposed gaps and breakdowns in the path from basic research into practice. 

As the new administration reacts by committing to invest substantial research dollars into addressing the “COVID Melt,” or learning loss, we must ask ourselves how to prepare for potentially future emergencies so that such tremendous and inequitable learning loss can be prevented from happening again. The International Alliance to Advance Learning in a Digital Era (IAALDE) is partnering with the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to foster productive synergy between the worlds of research, policy, and practice, beginning with a recent kickoff event.  Administrators and policy makers/implementors of policy were invited to engage with world class leading researchers across a broad spectrum of research in technology enhanced learning to accelerate the path from research into real educational impact through practice. The goal is that the work going forward would benefit tremendously from increased grounding from the lived experiences of administrators and implementors of policy in schools. At the same time, that greater awareness of research findings might offer opportunities to reflect and reconsider practices on the ground in schools. This discussion, involving over 100 delegates, was meant to lay the foundation for documents, resources, and activities to move the conversation forward. Find out more about insights learned, next steps, and how you can get involved on June 3!

Speaker: Carolyn P. Rose, Professor, Language Technologies and Human-Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University

Carolyn Rose is a Professor of Language Technologies and Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research program focuses on computational modeling of discourse to enable scientific understanding of the social and pragmatic nature of conversational interaction of all forms, and using this understanding to build intelligent computational systems for improving collaborative interactions. Her research group’s highly interdisciplinary work, published in over 270 peer reviewed publications, is represented in the top venues of 5 fields: namely, Language Technologies, Learning Sciences, Cognitive Science, Educational Technology, and Human-Computer Interaction, with awards in 3 of these fields. She is a Past President and Inaugural Fellow of the International Society of the Learning Sciences, Senior Member of IEEE, Founding Chair of the International Alliance to Advance Learning in the Digital Era, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. She also serves as a 2020-2021 AAAS Fellow under the Leshner Institute for Public Engagement with Science, with a focus on public engagement with Artificial Intelligence.

Moderator: Todd W. Neller Professor, Computer Science, Gettysburg College

Todd W. Neller is a Professor of Computer Science at Gettysburg College, and was the recipient of the 2018 AAAI/EAAI Outstanding Educator Award. A Cornell University Merrill Presidential Scholar, he received a B.S. in Computer Science with distinction in 1993. In 2000, he received his Ph.D. with distinction in teaching at Stanford University, where he was awarded a Stanford University Lieberman Fellowship, and the George E. Forsythe Memorial Award for excellence in teaching. His dissertation concerned extensions of artificial intelligence (AI) search algorithms to hybrid dynamical systems, and the refutation of hybrid system properties through simulation and information-based optimization. A game enthusiast, Neller has enjoyed pursuing game AI challenges, computing optimal play for jeopardy dice games such as Pass the Pigs and bluffing dice games such as Dudo, creating new reasoning algorithms for Clue/Cluedo, analyzing optimal Risk attack and defense policies, and designing games and puzzles.

2018 ACM SIGAI Student Essay Contest on Artificial Intelligence Technologies

After the success of our 2017 version of the contest we are happy to announce another round of the ACM SIGAI Student Essay Contest on Artificial Intelligence Technologies!

Download a PDF of the call here: https://tinyurl.com/SIGAIEssay2018

Win one of several $500 monetary prizes or a Skype conversation with a leading AI researcher including Joanna Bryson, Murray Campbell, Eric Horvitz, Peter Norvig, Iyad Rahwan, Francesca Rossi, or Toby Walsh.

We have extended the deadline to February 15th, 2019, Anywhere on Earth Time Zone.  Please get your submissions in!!

Students interested in these topics should consider submitting to the 2019 Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society Conference and/or Student Program — Deadline is in early November.  See the website for all the details.

2018 Topic

The ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (ACM SIGAI) supports the development and responsible application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. From intelligent assistants to self-driving cars, an increasing number of AI technologies now (or soon will) affect our lives. Examples include Google Duplex (Link) talking to humans, Drive.ai (Link) offering rides in US cities, chatbots advertising movies by impersonating people (Link), and AI systems making decisions about parole (Link) and foster care (Link). We interact with AI systems, whether we know it or not, every day.

Such interactions raise important questions. ACM SIGAI is in a unique position to shape the conversation around these and related issues and is thus interested in obtaining input from students worldwide to help shape the debate. We therefore invite all students to enter an essay in the 2018 ACM SIGAI Student Essay Contest, to be published in the ACM SIGAI newsletter “AI Matters,” addressing one or both of the following topic areas (or any other question in this space that you feel is important) while providing supporting evidence:

  • What requirements, if any, should be imposed on AI systems and technology when interacting with humans who may or may not know that they are interacting with a machine?  For example, should they be required to disclose their identities? If so, how? See, for example, “Turing’s Red Flag” in CACM (Link).
  • What requirements, if any, should be imposed on AI systems and technology when making decisions that directly affect humans? For example, should they be required to make transparent decisions? If so, how?  See, for example, the IEEE’s summary discussion of Ethically Aligned Design (Link).

Each of the above topic areas raises further questions, including

  • Who is responsible for the training and maintenance of AI systems? See, for example, Google’s (Link), Microsoft’s (Link), and IBM’s (Link) AI Principles.
  • How do we educate ourselves and others about these issues and possible solutions? See, for example, new ways of teaching AI ethics (Link).
  • How do we handle the fact that different cultures see these problems differently?  See, for example, Joi Ito’s discussion in Wired (Link).
  • Which steps can governments, industries, or organizations (including ACM SIGAI) take to address these issues?  See, for example, the goals and outlines of the Partnership on AI (Link).

All sources must be cited. However, we are not interested in summaries of the opinions of others. Rather, we are interested in the informed opinions of the authors. Writing an essay on this topic requires some background knowledge. Possible starting points for acquiring such background knowledge are:

  • the revised ACM Code of Ethics (Link), especially Section 3.7, and a discussion of why the revision was necessary (Link),
  • IEEE’s Ethically Aligned Design (Link), and
  • the One Hundred Year Study on AI and Life in 2030 (Link).

ACM and ACM SIGAI

ACM brings together computing educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field’s challenges. As the world’s largest computing society, ACM strengthens the profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM’s reach extends to every part of the globe, with more than half of its 100,000 members residing outside the U.S.  Its growing membership has led to Councils in Europe, India, and China, fostering networking opportunities that strengthen ties within and across countries and technical communities. Their actions enhance ACM’s ability to raise awareness of computing’s important technical, educational, and social issues around the world. See https://www.acm.org/ for more information.

ACM SIGAI brings together academic and industrial researchers, practitioners, software developers, end users, and students who are interested in AI. It promotes and supports the growth and application of AI principles and techniques throughout computing, sponsors or co-sponsors AI-related conferences, organizes the Career Network and Conference for early-stage AI researchers, sponsors recognized AI awards, supports AI journals, provides scholarships to its student members to attend conferences, and promotes AI education and publications through various forums and the ACM digital library. See https://sigai.acm.org/ for more information.

Format and Eligibility

The ACM SIGAI Student Essay Contest is open to all ACM SIGAI student members at the time of submission.  (If you are a student but not an ACM SIGAI member, you can join ACM SIGAI before submission for just US$ 11 at https://goo.gl/6kifV9 by selecting Option 1, even if you are not an ACM member.) Essays can be authored by one or more ACM SIGAI student members but each ACM SIGAI student member can (co-)author only one essay.

All authors must be SIGAI members at the time of submission.  All submissions not meeting this requirement will not be reviewed.

Essays should be submitted as pdf documents of any style with at most 5,000 words via email to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=acmsigai2018.

The deadline for submissions is January 10th, 2019.

We have extended the deadline to February 15th, 2019, Anywhere on Earth Time Zone.  Please get your submissions in!!

The authors certify with their submissions that they have followed the ACM publication policies on “Author Representations,” “Plagiarism” and “Criteria for Authorship” (http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/). They also certify with their submissions that they will transfer the copyright of winning essays to ACM.

Judges and Judging Criteria

Winning entries from last year’s essay contest can be found in recent issues of the ACM SIGAI newsletter “AI Matters,” specifically  Volume 3, Issue 3: http://sigai.acm.org/aimatters/3-3.html and  Volume 3, Issue 4: http://sigai.acm.org/aimatters/3-4.html.

Entries will be judged by the following panel of leading AI researchers and ACM SIGAI officers. Winning essays will be selected based on depth of insight, creativity, technical merit, and novelty of argument. All decisions by the judges are final.

    • Rediet Abebe, Cornell University
    • Emanuelle Burton, University of Illinois at Chicago
    • Sanmay Das, Washington University in St. Louis  
    • John P. Dickerson, University of Maryland
    • Virginia Dignum, Delft University of Technology
    • Tina Eliassi-Rad, Northeastern University
    • Judy Goldsmith, University of Kentucky
    • Amy Greenwald, Brown University
    • H. V. Jagadish, University of Michigan
    • Sven Koenig, University of Southern California  
    • Benjamin Kuipers, University of Michigan  
    • Nicholas Mattei, IBM Research
    • Alexandra Olteanu, Microsoft Research
    • Rosemary Paradis, Leidos
    • Kush Varshney, IBM Research
    • Roman Yampolskiy, University of Louisville
  • Yair Zick, National University of Singapore  

Prizes

All winning essays will be published in the ACM SIGAI newsletter “AI Matters.” ACM SIGAI provides five monetary awards of USD 500 each as well as 45-minute skype sessions with the following AI researchers:

    • Joanna Bryson, Reader (Assoc. Prof) in AI, University of Bath
    • Murray Campbell, Senior Manager, IBM Research AI
    • Eric Horvitz, Managing Director, Microsoft Research
    • Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google
    • Iyad Rahwan, Associate Professor, MIT Media Lab and Head of Scalable Corp.
    • Francesca Rossi, AI and Ethics Global Lead, IBM Research AI
  • Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence, UNSW Sydney, Data61 and TU Berlin

One award is given per winning essay. Authors or teams of authors of winning essays will pick (in a pre-selected order) an available skype session or one of the monetary awards until all skype sessions and monetary awards have been claimed. ACM SIGAI reserves the right to substitute a skype session with a different AI researcher or a monetary award for a skype session in case an AI researcher becomes unexpectedly unavailable. Some prizes might not be awarded in case the number of high-quality submissions is smaller than the number of prizes.

Questions?

In case of questions, please first check the ACM SIGAI blog for announcements and clarifications: https://sigai.acm.org/aimatters/blog/. You can also contact the ACM SIGAI Student Essay Contest Organizers at sigai@member.acm.org.

  • Nicholas Mattei (IBM Research) – ACM SIGAI Student Essay Contest Organizer and AI and Society Officer

with involvement from

    • Sven Koenig (University of Southern California), ACM SIGAI Chair
    • Sanmay Das (Washington University in St. Louis), ACM SIGAI Vice Chair
    • Rosemary Paradis (Leidos), ACM SIGAI Secretary/Treasurer
    • Benjamin Kuipers (University of Michigan), ACM SIGAI Ethics Officer
  • Amy McGovern (University of Oklahoma), ACM SIGAI AI Matters Editor-in Chief