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Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.

The Future of AI: CCC’s Response to OSTP RFI

September 7th, 2016 / in Announcements, CCC, policy, Research News, robotics / by Helen Wright

CCC AI web banner Contributions to this post were made by Greg Hager, Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Past Chair and Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University.

In June, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced a new Request for Information (RFI) on Artificial Intelligence (AI), to solicit feedback on how the United States can best prepare for the future of AI. According to the OSTP Blog, they “received 161 responses from a range of stakeholders, including individuals, academics and researchers, non-profit organizations, and industry.” All of the responses are now public and can be found here.

The Computing Community Consoritum‘s (CCC) submitted a response, which can be found here, after co-sponsoring the Artificial Intelligence for Social Good workshop with OSTP and Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in June 2016.

The themes for the AI for Social Good workshop were urban computing, environmental sustainability, health, and public welfare. The two keynote talks during the workshop were from Eric Horvitz, Technical Fellow and Director at Microsoft Research, who gave an inspiring keynote on the possibilities for AI in Support of People and Society and Lynn Overmann, Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who gave an eye opening keynote on AI and Criminal Justice: Challenges and Opportunities.

The AI for Social Good workshop was just one of a series of four events that took place across the country all co-hosted by OSTP. The other workshops were:

Legal and Governance Implications of Artificial Intelligence – University of Washington
Safety and Control for Artificial Intelligence – Carnegie Mellon University
The Social and Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence Technologies in the Near-Term – New York University

See highlights from each workshop in this Medium post.

Please see the CCC’s response to learn more about the outcome of AI for Social Good. A more thorough report will be published by the CCC later this fall, and available here. Videos of all workshop talks can be found here. Slides from workshop presenters can be found here.