Given the many unknowns about large language models and potential for powerful but flawed chatbots to cause trouble, Google should consider inviting outsiders to do more than just try limited demos of LaMDA, says Sameer Singh, a fellow at Allen Institute for AI and [ICS associate] professor at University of California, Irvine. “There has to be more conversation about how they’re making this safe and testing so outsiders can contribute to those efforts,” he says.
Read the full story on Wired.
This week we speak with Yasaman Razeghi and Prof. Sameer Singh from UC Irvine. Yasaman recently published a paper called “Impact of Pretraining Term Frequencies on Few-Shot Reasoning” where she demonstrated comprehensively that large language models only perform well on reasoning tasks because they memorize the dataset. For the first time she showed the accuracy was linearly correlated to the occurrence rate in the training corpus, something which OpenAI should have done in the first place!
[Read more…]Computer Science and Statistics graduate programs are in the top 20 among public universities.
The University of California, Irvine’s graduate programs in education and chemistry place in the nation’s top 10 among public universities in U.S. News & World Report’s annual graduate school rankings, published online today. Nine other fields of advanced study are in the top 20 among public universities, marking UCI as one of the leading locations in the country for students to pursue graduate degrees.
[Read more…]From chatbots that answer tax questions to algorithms that drive autonomous vehicles and dish out medical diagnoses, artificial intelligence undergirds many aspects of daily life. Creating smarter, more accurate systems requires a hybrid human-machine approach, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine. In a study published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they present a new mathematical model that can improve performance by combining human and algorithmic predictions and confidence scores.
[Read more…]A group of UCI students launched the ZotMeal app on the iOS App Store on Jan. 3. The app is designed to provide easy access to Brandywine and the Anteatery’s dining menus, display nutritional information, shorten lines and provide one-tap navigation to the dining halls.
Second year computer science major Shengyuan Lu was the iOS Tech Lead; first year computer science major Eric Pedley was the Backend Tech Lead; second year computer science and engineering major Brian Vo was the Backend Software Development Engineer; second year computer science major Justin Yue was the Android Tech Lead; second year computer science and engineering major Tony Liu was the Android Software Development Engineer.
During the HackUCI 2021 hackathon, which is a limited time software development competition, the UCI students created a prototype for the app. This prototype received 220 upvotes on Reddit, leading the group to think it could meet a need on campus.
Lu spoke with the New University about the creation of the ZotMeal app.
Read the full story on New University.
At the SIGCOMM 2021 data communication conference on Thursday, Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California, Irvine presented “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse,” an examination of the damage a fast-moving cloud of magnetized solar particles could cause the global internet. Abdu Jyothi’s research points out an additional nuance to a blackout-causing solar storm: the scenario where even if power returns in hours or days, mass internet outages persist.
Read the full story at Wired.
“If you’re being nondiscriminatory in an absolute sense, so there’s no prioritization, there’s no special insight—it just goes back to how many times the words appear on a web page, like the early search engines—that’s not what Google offers you,” said Scott Jordan, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Irvine and former chief technologist at the Federal Communications Commission. A search engine that didn’t try to bring the best, most relevant results to the top would be basically worthless. “If you mean nondiscriminatory in a much narrower sense, like does Google’s algorithm include whether the webpage has a conservative or a liberal tint, or is based on anything else—gender, race, what have you—then, yeah, Google might say that they’re nondiscriminatory in these narrower senses. But this doesn’t easily map onto the question of common carriage.”
Read the full article at Wired.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Van Buren v. United States on June 3 requires lawyers and policymakers to revisit the roles that law, policy and technology play in deterring, detecting, preventing and punishing misuse of sensitive data. Free societies must find ways to effectively harness increasingly large datasets and advanced powers to analyze and use such data to enhance people’s security and improve their lives while protecting individual privacy, intellectual property and other key interests.
Read the full article at Lawfare.
In just its third year of competing, UCI’s cybersecurity club placed fifth in the nation at the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition finals last month. It was Irvine’s first trip to the finals after beating perennial favorite Stanford in the Western Regionals.
Read the full article at Irvine Standard.
For her junior year of high school, Sirui Hu decided to take a step outside her comfort zone – a big one. The Shenzhen, China teen went abroad her junior and senior year and landed in Orange County. And when her high school offered a joint summer program that brought her to UCI to explore campus and meet new students, she fell in love with the campus and its inclusive culture.
[Read more…]