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 14^th 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 about the interpretability, transparency, and fairness of these algorithms. In response, an exciting mathematical theory of fairness is emerging that addresses topics such as defining fairness, ways of designing decision-making algorithms to incorporate fairness requirements, and incentivizing decision makers to be fair. Topics to be discussed in this session will provide a precise understanding of the frictions to fairness due to reasons such as mislabeled training data, use of inappropriate features, insufficient data, feedback loops, and the computational difficulty of being fair. This understanding will further inform attendees on how to achieve fair outcomes by avoiding obvious pitfalls and providing appropriate incentives.

Speakers:

• Moritz Hardt, University of California, Berkeley: New Approaches to Fairness in Automated Decision Making
• Sampath Kannan, University of Pennsylvania: Machine Learning and Fairness
• Toniann Pitassi, University of Toronto: Recognizing and Overcoming Frictions to Fairness

Moderator: Suresh Venkatasubramanian, University of Utah

Discussant: Jaime Morgenstern, University of Washington

For the session location and more information visit the AAAS session webpage.

Using Computing to Sustainably Feed a Growing Population

Friday, February 14^th 3:30 – 5:00 PM

Synopsis: In the coming decades, the world population is projected to grow significantly, increasing the demand for food in the face of climate change, workforce aging and shortage, as well as environmental degradation. To ensure long-term food security, it is imperative to explore emerging computing innovations such as big data, artificial intelligence, internet of things, cloud computing with the purpose of working towards the next agricultural revolution. Computing has already transformed agriculture. Precision agriculture uses cyber-physical systems and data science to increase yield, reducing fertilizer and pesticide runoffs. Global Agricultural Monitoring uses satellite imagery to monitor major crops for stress or recognize the failure to enable timely interventions to reduce disruptions in global food supply. This is only a start, and new compelling opportunities lie ahead. For example, big data may help synthesize new agricultural knowledge, make predictive decisions, and foster data-supported innovation. This panel will feature the most promising computing advances to sustainably increase food production, based on the recent US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Agriculture Cyberinformatics and Tools Initiative; the congressional research service report on Big Data in U.S. Agriculture; and workshops such as the National Science Foundation’s Midwest Big Data Hub on Machine Learning from Farm to Table and Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems Data Science Workshop.

Speakers:

• Chandra Krintz, University of California, Santa Barbara: SmartFarm – Hybrid Cloud IoT Systems for Future Agriculture
• Ranveer Chandra, Microsoft Azure Global: AI and Internet of Things for Agriculture
• Patrick Schnable, Iowa State University: Improving Crop Production with Large-scale Phenotyping

Moderator: Lucas Joppa, Microsoft

For the session location and more information visit the AAAS session webpage.

Artificial Intelligence Research: A Community Roadmap

Saturday, February 15, 8:00 – 9:30 AM

Synopsis: Decades of artificial intelligence research have produced formidable technologies that are providing immense benefit to industry, government, and society. AI systems can now translate across multiple languages, identify objects in images and video, converse about order placement, and control cars. The ubiquitous deployment of AI systems has created a trillion-dollar industry that is projected to quadruple in three years, while also exposing the need to make AI systems fair and trustworthy, as well as more competent about the world in which they and we operate. Future AI systems have the potential for transformative impact on society and will be rightfully expected to handle complex tasks and responsibilities, engage in meaningful communication, and improve awareness through experience. There are also concerns about future work in light of AI advancements that demand improved public communication and adjustments to the education and training of the workforce in order to leverage new types of jobs being created by AI technologies.

In a recent study by leading AI experts carried out by the Computing Community Consortium and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, they concluded that achieving the full potential of AI technologies poses research challenges that will require significant sustained investment and a radical transformation of the AI research enterprise. This session formulates a roadmap for AI research and development over the next twenty years.

Speakers:

• Yolanda Gil, University of Southern California: The Possibilities for Transformational Research in Artificial Intelligence
• Bart Selman, Cornell University: Why Now is the Time for a Paradigm Shift in Research in Artificial Intelligence
• Daniel Lopresti, Lehigh University: How AI Research Will Impact Other Scientific Advancements

Moderator: Ann Schwartz Drobnis, Computing Community Consortium

For the session location and more information visit the AAAS session webpage.

Detecting, Combating, and Identifying Dis and Mis-information

Saturday, February 15, 10:00 – 11:30 AM

Synopsis: Democratization of information and broad interconnectivity has had a wide range of positive transformative impacts on society. Through social networks, individuals can stay connected and share information, medical professionals can reach patients, and access to news and scholarly publications both from the consumer and producer perspective has significantly increased. Concurrently, there is an increasing rise in manipulation of information leading to the spread of disinformation in a broad range of media modalities including text, imagery, and video. This session brings together experts from social science, computer science, and journalism. Panelists will discuss computational training for journalists, the development of new technology to better identify and detect disinformation before it spreads, automated fact-checking systems, and methods for propagating corrections to misinformation. The session is structured specifically to address the need for an interdisciplinary approach, and attendees will gain an understanding of the latest technologies which can be leveraged for the purpose of detecting deep fakes and revealing the truth.

Speakers:

• Emma Spiro, University of Washington: Online Communication in the Context of Emergencies and Disaster Events
• Dan Gillmor, Arizona State University: Journalism and Misinformation
• John Beieler, Office of the Director of National Intelligence: Vulnerability of AI Systems

Moderator: Nadya Bliss, Arizona State University

Discussant: Juliana Freire, New York University

For the session location and more information visit the AAAS session webpage.

Catalyzing Computing Podcast Recording

Saturday, February 15^th, 12:00 – 1:00 PM

Synopsis: The Mission of Computing Research Association’s Computing Community Consortium is to catalyze the computing research community and enable the pursuit of innovative, high impact research.

The Computing Community Consortium’s (CCC) official podcast, Catalyzing Computing, features interviews with researchers and policymakers about their background and experiences in the computing community. The podcast also offers recaps of visioning workshops and other events hosted by the Consortium. If you want to learn about some of the computing community’s most influential members or keep tabs on the latest areas of interest, then this is the podcast for you.

Speakers: TBD

Discussant: Khari Douglas, Computing Community Consortium

For the session location and more information visit the AAAS session webpage.

Next Generation Computer Hardware

Saturday, February 15^th, 3:30 – 5:00 PM

Synopsis: It is undeniable that powerful computing has led to fundamental advances in science and engineering. Rapid and powerful computing in small-scale devices such as phones and laptop have also revolutionized the global economy and offer the promise of AI assistants, smart health systems, and augmented reality. Unfortunately, this is soon to come to a screeching halt. CMOS-based computers that enabled the growth of computing through the 20th Century have reached their limits – Moore’s law and Dennard scaling, the observed doubling of transistors in microchips and the constant power consumption of shrinking transistors, are ending. In order to continue progress in science and engineering research, it is essential to find novel computers capable of meeting the community’s future needs.

A new way of designing computation is emerging in thermodynamic computing. Borrowing from the natural world and the proposition that thermodynamics drives the self-organization and evolution of natural systems, thermodynamic computing could lead to powerful and highly efficient analog computational systems that utilize self-organization to perform calculation. Leaders in physics, computational biology, and computer science came together in a recent Computing Community Consortium workshop to outline a research agenda to make such systems. Related to the theory of thermodynamic computing, reversible computing, also offers the possibility of increasing energy efficiency, while maintaining traditional digital computing systems.

Speakers:

• Tom Conte, University of Washington: Into The Wild: Radically New Computing Methods for Science
• Todd Hylton, University of California, San Diego: The Future of Computing: It’s All About Energy
• Stanley Williams, Texas A&M University: Brain-inspired Computing Systems

Moderator: Mark Hill, University of Wisconsin-Madison

For the session location and more information visit the AAAS session webpage.

The Debrief: Detecting, Combating, and Identifying Dis and Mis-information

Synopsis: “The Debrief” is an opportunity for a twenty minute public interview of a scientific session’s speakers by a burgeoning journalist for both a physical and virtual audience. Interviews will be held on our Expo Stage.

Nadya Bliss (Arizona State) will present the key take-aways from the Detecting, Combating, and Identifying Dis and Mis-information session.

Speakers: Nadya Bliss, Arizona State University

Learn more about past and present CCC-led sessions at the AAAS Annual Meeting here.