Harvard Business Review: “The AI Transparency Paradox ” (Sameer Singh research cited)

It is becoming clear that disclosures about AI pose their own risks: Explanations can be hacked, releasing additional information may make AI more vulnerable to attacks, and disclosures can make companies more susceptible to lawsuits or regulatory action.

Call it AI’s “transparency paradox” — while generating more information about AI might create real benefits, it may also create new risks. To navigate this paradox, organizations will need to think carefully about how they’re managing the risks of AI, the information they’re generating about these risks, and how that information is shared and protected.

Read the full story at Harvard Business Review.

ZotBot Competing in the Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge

“Alexa, let’s chat!” With those three words, Alexa customers will soon be able to converse with one of 10 socialbots selected to participate in the Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge 3 — a multimillion-dollar competition among colleges to build the best socialbot. While this is the competition’s third year, it is the first time UCI has applied. In June, the UCI team learned it had been selected to participate and would be receiving $250,000 in research funding as well as Alexa-enabled devices, free Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support development efforts, and access to other tools, data and Alexa team support.

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Developing a Data Analytics Course for Low-Income High Schools

A new class offering at select high schools in San Jose, Philadelphia and Cleveland is exposing low-income students to data analytics, preparing them to leverage future career opportunities stemming from advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence. The new curriculum was made possible with a grant from Deloitte Foundation, which supports education through a variety of initiatives that help develop the talent of the future and promote excellence in teaching, research and curriculum innovation, and Base 11, a nonprofit focused on engaging students from low-resource communities with STEM education, and was developed in consultation with UC Irvine. The award was made to UCI to develop a high school data analytics course targeting the needs of low-income students and involved a partnership between UCI’s Office of Access and Inclusion (OAI) for the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) and the Samueli School of Engineering.

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ICS Partnership with AI2 Leads to a New Toolkit and Best Demo Paper Award

Thanks to the partnership between the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sameer Singh and two ICS undergraduate students, Jens Tuyls and Junlin Wang, were part of a team awarded the Best Demo Paper at the 2019 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2019). The paper, “AllenNLP Interpret: A Framework for Explaining Predictions of NLP Models,” is a collaboration with AI2 researchers Eric Wallace, Sanjay Subramanian and Matt Gardner, and everyone was on hand at the conference in Hong Kong to receive the award.

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Professor Tsudik Shares Cybersecurity Expertise During Fulbright Specialist Visit in Myanmar

Distinguished Professor of Computer Science Gene Tsudik recently spent a month in Myanmar as part of the Fulbright Specialist Program. Sponsored by the U.S. State Department through the Fulbright Foundation, the program sends U.S. faculty and professionals to serve as expert consultants on curriculum, faculty development, institutional planning and related subjects at academic institutions abroad. Fulbright Specialists are highly experienced, well-established faculty members and professionals.

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