ACM Europe Tech Policy Committee Addresses the Future of AI

Comments on European Commission AI White Paper: The European Commission recently sought public input on its AI White Paper regarding policy options to enable trustworthy AI development. ACM’s Europe Technology Policy Committee, led by Alejandro Saucedo, submitted comments addressing specific issues with automated decision-making (ADM) systems, warning that such systems must be accountable and traceable, use strict caution in ceding autonomous control, recognise that ADM is never neutral, and carefully consider societal and mental health risks.

 

ACM-W Launches New Webinar Series Celebrating Technology Leaders

By highlighting successful technical women who are leading diverse careers in the technology industry, ACM-W’s new webinar  series, “Celebrating Technology Leaders,” aims to inform students and early-career professionals about the multitude of career options open to them. The introductory webinar on August 26 will feature ACM-W’s Jodi Tims, Reyyan Ayfer, Amelia Cole and Bushra Anjum. They’ll discuss ACM-W’s work to support, celebrate and advocate for women in computing, as well as the rationale behind the new series and what viewers can expect in the coming months.

Register here

 

New Podcast Series: ACM ByteCast

 ACM’s Practitioner Board has created ACM ByteCast, a new podcast series in which hosts Rashmi Mohan and Jessica Bell interview researchers, practitioners, and innovators who are at the intersection of computing research and practice. In each monthly episode, guests will share their experiences, the lessons they’ve learned, and their own visions for the future of computing. Listen to the latest episode featuring Kristian Lum, Researcher in University of Pennsylvania’s CIS Department, on the ACM Learning Center website, and subscribe to the series wherever you get your podcasts.

 

KAUST and ACM Sign Open Access Agreement

ACM and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have entered into a new transformative open access agreement. The agreement, which runs for a three-year term beginning January 1, 2020, covers both access to and open access publication in ACM’s journals, proceedings and magazines for KAUST. This agreement represents the first transformative open access agreement for ACM with an institution in the Middle East. The new agreement expresses ACM’s commitment to open access publication and its transition to become a fully open access research publisher within the next five years. ACM is extending the principles of the ACM OPEN access model to universities throughout the world.

 

ACM, SAGE Publishing to Launch New Journal, Collective Intelligence

ACM is collaborating with SAGE Publishing and Nesta on Collective Intelligence, a new open access journal, which will bring together formerly siloed communities of researchers and practitioners in areas such as computer science, economics, biology, sociology, political science, and philosophy. The online-only, gold open access journal will bring together and shape an emerging field devoted to understanding group performance in diverse systems, from adaptive matter, cellular and neural systems and animal societies to human organizations and systems of all kinds, hybrid AI human teams and nanobot swarms.

 

Special Issue of ACM Interactions Explores HCI Design Challenges Post-COVID

The July/August issue of ACM’s Interactions magazine explores the ways in which critical research and emerging practices in computer-human interaction design are being applied to address societal challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. The magazine’s Editors-in-Chief Daniela Rosner, Alex Taylor and Mikael Wiberg took action in late March, foregoing planned editorial content for the issue to pursue community responses and reactions to the pandemic as they were happening. They issued a call for participation, seeking thoughts, reflections, and responses to the crisis from computing researchers, designers, scientists, and technologists from around the world. The response was immediate and extraordinary. The issue, a collection of those responses, helps answer critical questions, such as how to continue with design work and scholarship in these times; how the HCI community should adjust and react; and what might be more equitable ways of approaching design and building technologies in light of COVID-19.

 

Upcoming Online Conferences

UbiComp 2020, September 12 to 16

The 2020 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing will feature workshops on Combining Physical and Data-driven Knowledge in Ubiquitous Computing; Continual and Multimodal Learning for Internet of Things; Mental Health and Well-Being; and more. Papers in ACM IMWUT Journal issues, a virtual Demos/Posters track, and the ISWC Design Exhibition are also part of the conference. UbiComp is collocated with the ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC).

 

Tapia 2020, September 16 to 19

The ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing is a premier venue to acknowledge, promote and celebrate diversity. Panels, workshops, poster sessions, networking opportunities and a career fair will bring together undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers, and professionals in computing from all backgrounds and ethnicities. Colin Parris, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, GE Digital will deliver the Ken Kennedy Lecture.

 

RecSys 2020, September 22 to 26

The ACM Conference on Recommender Systems will bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to present their latest results and identify new trends and challenges in providing recommendation components in a range of innovative application contexts. Filippo Menczer, professor of Informatics and Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington will deliver a keynote on “4 Reasons Why Social Media Make Us Vulnerable to Manipulation.”

 

womENcourage 2020, September 24 to 27

womENcourage 2020 will be virtually hosted by ADA University in Baku, Azerbaijan. The roster of distinguished speakers includes Gabriele Kotsis, ACM’s new president; ACM-W Europe Chair Ruth Lennon; and 2020-2021 ACM Athena Lecturer Sarit Kraus. Conference participants will learn about learn about “The Big Promise of Big Data Analytics” and explore “The Artificial Intelligence: from Algorithms to Ethics.” The program also includes a career fair, hackathon, workshops and tutorials.