New Conference: AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society

ACM SIGAI is pleased to announce the launch of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, to be co-located with AAAI-18, February 2-3, 2018 in New Orleans. The Call for Papers is included below and is also available at  http://www.aies-conference.com/. Please note the October 31 deadline for submissions.

We hope to see you at the new conference in New Orleans next February!
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AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society
February 2-3, 2018
New Orleans, USA

http://www.aies-conference.com/

As AI is becoming more pervasive in our life, its impact on society is more significant and concerns and issues are raised regarding aspects such as value alignment, data bias and data policy, regulations, and workforce displacement. Only a multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder effort can find the best ways to address these concerns, including experts of various disciplines, such as AI, computer science, ethics, philosophy, economics, sociology, psychology, law, history, and politics. In order to address these issues in a scientific context, AAAI and ACM have joined forces to start a new conference, the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society.

The first edition of this conference will be co-located with AAAI-18 on February 2-3, 2018 in New Orleans, USA. The program of the conference will include peer-reviewed paper presentations, invited talks, panels, and working sessions.

The conference welcomes contributions on a broad set of topics, included the following ones:

  • Building ethical AI systems
  • Value alignment
  • Moral machine decision making
  • Trust and explanations in AI systems
  • Fairness and Transparency in AI systems
  • Ethical design and development of AI systems
  • AI for social good
  • Human-level AI
  • Controlling AI
  • Impact of AI on workforce
  • Societal impact of AI
  • AI and law

Submitted papers should adopt a scientific approach to address any questions related to the above topics. Moreover, they should clearly establish the research contribution, its relevance, and its relation to prior research. All submissions must be made in the appropriate format, and within the specified length limit; details and a LaTeX template can be found at the conference web site.

We solicit papers (pdf file) of up to 6 pages + 1 page for references (AAAI format), submitted through the Easychair system.

We expect papers submitted by researchers of several disciplines (AI, computer science, philosophy, economics, law, and others). The program committee includes members that are experts in all the relevant areas, to ensure appropriate review of papers.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: To accommodate the publishing traditions of different fields, authors of accepted papers can ask that only a one-page abstract of the paper appear in the proceedings, along with a URL pointing to the full paper. Authors should guarantee the link to be reliable for at least two years. This option is available to accommodate subsequent publication in journals that would not consider results that have been published in preliminary form in a conference proceedings. Such papers must be submitted electronically and formatted just like papers submitted for full-text publication.

Results previously published or presented at another archival conference prior to this one, or published (or accepted for publication) at a journal prior to the submission deadline, can be submitted only if the author intends to publish the paper as a one-page abstract.

The proceedings of the conference will be published in the ACM Digital Library.

Among all papers, a best paper will be selected by the program committee and will be awarded the AI, People, and Society best paper award, sponsored by the Partnership on AI. The award is $1,000. Also, the winner will be able to participate in a global competition among several conferences, for a grand prize of $7,500.

A selected subset of the accepted papers will have the opportunity to be considered for journal publication in the JAIR special track on AI and Society (http://www.jair.org/specialtrack-aisoc-call.html).

Important dates:

Submission: October 31st, 2017
Notification: December 15th, 2017
Final version: March 1st, 2017

(Note: the final version due date is after the conference dates, to include feedback from the conference discussions).

Conference program co-chairs:

AI: Francesca Rossi, IBM Research and University of Padova
AI and workforce: Jason Furman, Harvard University
AI and philosophy: Huw Price, Cambridge University
AI and law: TBD

More information will be available soon on the conference web site.

National Press Club USACM Panel

Your Public Policy Officer attended the USACM Panel on Algorithmic Transparency and Accountability on Thursday, Sept 14th at the National Press Club. The panelists were moderator Simson Garfinkel, Jeanna Neefe Matthews, Nicholas Diakopoulos, Dan Rubins, Geoff Cohen, and Ansgar Koene. USACM Chair Stuart Shapiro opened the event, and Ben Sneiderman provided comments from the audience.

USACM and EUACM have identified and codified a set of principles intended to ensure fairness in this evolving policy and technology ecosystem. These were a focus of the panel discussion and are as follows:(1) awareness;
(2) access and redress;
(3) accountability;
(4) explanation;
(5) data provenance;
(6) audit-ability; and
(7) validation and testing.
See also the full letter in the September, 2017, issue of CACM.

The panel and audience discussion ranged from frameworks for evaluating algorithms and creating policy for fairness to examples of algorithmic abuse. Language for clear communication with the public and policymakers, as well as even scientists, was a concern — as has been discussed in our Public Policy blog.  Algorithms in the strict sense may not always be the issue, but rather the data used to build and train a system, especially when the system is used for prediction and decision making. Much was said about the types of bias and unfairness that can be embedded in modern AI and machine learning systems. The essence of the concerns includes the ability to explain how a system works, the need to develop models of algorithmic transparency, and how policy or an independent clearinghouse might identify fair and problematic algorithmic systems.

Please read more about the panel discussion at https://www.acm.org/public-policy/algorithmic-panel
and
watch the very informative YouTube video of the panel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDW-nM8idgg&feature=youtu.be

September Policy Events

Please note AI policy issues getting national attention. Look for replays and videos if you cannot attend or view live events.

Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and Jobs Panelists at the Technology Policy Institute’s 2017 Aspen Forum talk about the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on jobs. Speakers included authors and educators, Google’s chief economist, and a Microsoft AI research specialist. C-SPAN 1 Program ID: 432196-2
Airing Details • Sep 03, 2017 | 12:47pm EDT | C-SPAN 1 • Sep 04, 2017 | 10:19pm EDT |

Experts to Explore Far-Reaching Impact of Algorithms on Society and Best Strategies to Prevent Algorithmic Bias.
USACM will be hosting a panel event on algorithmic transparency and accountability on Thursday, September 14 from 9am to 10:30am at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.  Experts Ansgar Koene (University of Nottingham), Dan Rubins (Legal Robot), Geoff A. Cohen (Stroz Friedberg), Jeanna Matthews (Clarkson University), and Nicholas Diakopoulos (Northwestern University) will be discussing the impact of algorithmic decision-making in society and the technical underpinnings of algorithmic models. The panel will be moderated by Simson Garfinkel, Co-chair of USACM’s Working Group on Algorithmic Transparency and Accountability. https://www.acm.org/media-center/2017/august/usacm-ata-panel-media-advisory