Data Science newsletter – November 12, 2021

Newsletter features journalism, research papers and tools/software for November 12, 2021

 

The Senate has voted 58-35 to confirm statistician @_Rob_Santos as the first Latino and second-ever person of color to be Census Bureau director.

Twitter, Hansi Lo Wang


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Once sworn in, Santos is expected to serve through 2026 during key #2030Census preparations.


Is Your Data Safe?

Columbia University, Columbia News


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Information Security Essentials: A Guide for Reporters, Editors, and Newsroom Leaders by Susan McGregor, an associate research scholar at Columbia’s Data Science Institute, is an indispensable guide for protecting news writers, sources, and organizations in the digital era. McGregor provides a systematic understanding of the key technical, legal, and conceptual issues that anyone teaching, studying, or practicing journalism should know.

McGregor answered some questions about the book for Columbia News, and also shared some reading recommendations and her party guest wish list.


Fluent: The First Smart Writing Tool for People Who Stutter

Stony Brook University, SBU News


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Stony Brook University PhD candidate Bhavya Ghai and Professor Klaus Mueller from the Department of Computer Science, have proposed an AI-based script-writing tool: Fluent.

Fluent is the first of its kind. Much of the literature that addresses the intersection of stuttering and AI focuses on a singular facet — stuttering detection. While there is no cure to stuttering, only intervention, this literature looks at diagnosis, not solutions. Fluent addresses the latter.

Through the use of AI, the smart writing tool leverages speech patterns of people that stutter, specifically substitution tendencies. Through this, Fluent creates AI-driven inroads for continuous speech.


Exploring the relationship between 5G and Edge AI in the future

Becoming Human: Artificial Intelligence Magazine, Ninad Madhab


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Edge computing is thriving in the global tech-driven market through the implementation of Edge AI in multiple edge devices such as smart phones, smart speakers, drones, AGVs, and many more. Meanwhile, the introduction of a 5G wireless network can provide high speed to multiple IoT devices in the future. This does not indicate that 5G and edge computing will act as inertia and will not complement each other. This is one of the myths that the relationship between 5G and edge computing will become critical in the tech-driven future. Let’s explore the actual relationship between 5G and edge computing in certain edge devices for a better smart home.


Microsoft shares more details about its Privacy Preserving Machine Learning initiative

Neowin, Usama Jawad


from

Ensuring customer privacy and maintaining their trust, at least on paper, has become a priority for many tech firms, especially since Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal back in 2018. Striking a balance between the privacy of individuals while showing them personalized content – sometimes from third-parties – has become an exceedingly daunting task. To tackle this problem, Microsoft Research kickstarted the Privacy Preserving Machine Learning (PPML) initiative in collaboration with other Microsoft product teams, and today, it has shared more details on the effort.


More good work on socioeconomic diversity in academia, focusing on PhD training and cross-field comparisons (data: NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates).

Twitter, Aaron Clauset


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Fascinating results, showing that there’s *a lot* going on with SES, in Economics and beyond.


The Turing Test Is Bad For Business

WIRED, Ideas; Daron Acemoglu, Michael I. Jordan, E. Glen Weyl i


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Fears of Artificial intelligence fill the news: job losses, inequality, discrimination, misinformation, or even a superintelligence dominating the world. The one group everyone assumes will benefit is business, but the data seems to disagree. Amid all the hype, US businesses have been slow in adopting the most advanced AI technologies, and there is little evidence that such technologies are contributing significantly to productivity growth or job creation.

This disappointing performance is not merely due to the relative immaturity of AI technology. It also comes from a fundamental mismatch between the needs of business and the way AI is currently being conceived by many in the technology sector—a mismatch that has its origins in Alan Turing’s pathbreaking 1950 “imitation game” paper and the so-called Turing test he proposed therein.


Scientists extend and straighten iconic climate “hockey stick”

Ars Technica, Howard Lee


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The climate “hockey stick” refers to a reconstruction of temperatures over the past 1,000 years. The data shows flattish temperatures over the last millennium, like the handle of a Hockey stick, ending in a “blade” of rapidly rising temperatures since the industrial revolution. The idea first appeared in a paper by Michael Mann and Raymond Bradley of the University of Massachusetts and Malcolm Hughes of the University of Arizona. The work became famous after appearing in a UN climate report, after which it was the focus of climate denial, hacking, defamation, and disinformation, all of which was dramatized in a recent BBC TV drama called “The Trick.”

Today, in a paper published by Nature, scientists show that the “handle” of the “hockey stick” extends back 9,500 years, while its “blade” is taller—the last decade was 1.5° C hotter than the average temperature over the last 11,700 years. “Human-caused global temperature change during the last century was likely faster than any changes during the last 24,000 years,” said lead author Dr. Matt Osman of the University of Arizona.


TeraGo Partners with McMaster University to Deploy the First Institution-based Private 5G Millimeter Wave Network

PR Newswire, TeraGo


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A 5G millimeter wave private network delivers higher speeds and lower latency and is a prerequisite to advanced manufacturing and logistics. With these capabilities, users can access the benefits of machine learning, augmented reality, remote automation, edge computing, and more, to improve current products and processes.

McMaster is the first university in Canada to adopt this technology. By equipping McMaster with a 5G millimeter wave private network, the university’s research division and TeraGo will be able to jointly develop advanced manufacturing and logistics.


Stay or sell? The US$110-trillion investment industry gets tougher on climate

Financial Post, Financial Times, Attracta Mooney


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As COVID-19 ripped through the world in 2020, a cluster of senior figures at Aviva Investors, the £262 billion U.K. asset manager, held a series of virtual meetings over the course of six months to discuss the other big issue looming over their portfolios: climate change.

Concerned that global warming would hit the long-term valuations of companies, the group decided on a rare course of action for a big asset manager. Aviva Investors warned about 30 fossil fuel intensive companies that if they failed to take radical action to slash their emissions, it would sell out across its equities and fixed income portfolios within one to three years.


Algorithmic tracking is ‘damaging mental health’ of UK workers | Artificial intelligence (AI)

The Guardian, David Milmo


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Monitoring of workers and setting performance targets through algorithms is damaging employees’ mental health and needs to be controlled by new legislation, according to a group of MPs and peers.

An “accountability for algorithms act’” would ensure that companies evaluate the effect of performance-driven regimes such as queue monitoring in supermarkets or deliveries-per-hour guidelines for delivery drivers, said the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on the future of work.

“Pervasive monitoring and target-setting technologies, in particular, are associated with pronounced negative impacts on mental and physical wellbeing as workers experience the extreme pressure of constant, real-time micro-management and automated assessment,” said the APPG members in their report, the New Frontier: Artificial Intelligence at Work.


Measuring Firm Environmental Performance to Inform Asset Management and Standardized Disclosure

National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper, Nicholas Z. Muller


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Investing according to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria is gaining momentum. Most environmental performance indices focus only on the tonnage of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. This paper proposes an index covering eight pollutants expressed in monetary damage. Inclusion of multiple pollutants reflects a broader range of reputational and regulatory risks. Monetization appropriately weights emissions. CO₂ dominates the mass of other pollutants, yet the marginal damages from other pollutants are larger than CO₂. In the U.S. utility sector from 2014 to 2017, indices which only track CO₂ mischaracterize firms’ environmental performance and underestimate its effect on financial outcomes relative to the multipollutant index. Dirtier firms exhibit lower share prices and higher forward returns. The effect is twice as large for the multipollutant index compared to CO₂. Analysts’ earnings forecasts for dirtier firms systematically undershoot actuals. Earnings errors are between three and five times more sensitive to the multipollutant index than to CO₂. The multipollutant index may suggest new management strategies to financial market participants relative to those based on carbon intensity. ESG disclosure standards based on the new index are more likely to affect financial outcomes, capital allocation decisions, and firm behavior than disclosure of carbon intensity.


CMU opens first AI maker space to let stu­dents ‘sharpen the cut­ting edge of AI’

Pitsburgh Post-Gazette, Lauren Rosenblatt


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With visions of a robot playground, an obstacle course for drones and a “smart” kitchen, Carnegie Mellon University opened its first “maker space” for artificial intelligence.

The idea of a maker space isn’t anything new — they are often used as a place for students, researchers, entrepreneurs or tinkerers to experiment with different materials and technologies. But at CMU, they had been found mostly in the engineering department or with a focus on hardware.

On Wednesday, the university unveiled what it believes to be the first maker space devoted to software.

Robots are still there — there are already more than 40 in the 2,000 square foot facility — but the research done in the space will focus on things like computer vision, speech recognition and artificial intelligence.


Cambridge-built carbon credit marketplace will support reforestation efforts worldwide

Cambridge Network


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A new Cambridge centre will bring together computer scientists and conservation scientists to build a trusted marketplace for carbon credits and support global reforestation efforts, the first initiative of its kind in the UK.

The Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits (4C) – based in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, and the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute – has two primary goals: to support students and researchers in the relevant areas of computer science, environmental science, and economics; and to create a decentralised marketplace where purchasers of carbon credits can confidently and directly fund trusted nature-based projects.

The Centre will build its decentralised marketplace on the energy-efficient Tezos blockchain because it operates sustainably and allows third parties to verify all transactions, in line with the Centre’s vision to support a sustainable future through technology. The goal of the marketplace is to exponentially increase the number of real nature-based conservation and restoration projects by channelling funding towards them via market-based instruments.


Learning to Ignore: A Case Study of Organization-Wide Bulk Email Effectiveness

grouplens, ruoyankong


from

We’re at a university where an employee receives 27 bulk emails from the organization (the untargeted and unpersonalized emails sent to a large list of recipients) — each of them contains over 8 messages on average. That means an employee receives over 250 unique pieces of content per week from central units (e.g. president office, provost office) — not from their students and their peers, but from the communicators in central units. By inputting a mailing list and pressing a button, a communicator could send an email to over 20,000 employees (see figure 1).


Events



Einstein Foundation Awards will be live-streamed Nov 24 at 7pm (CET).

Twitter, Brian Nosek


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With @melindagates
, Co-Chair and Trustee, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, @Magda_Skipper
, Editor-in-Chief, Nature, and Einstein Foundation Berlin Chair Martin Rennert.


Deadlines



Just Tech Fellowship

“The Social Science Research Council seeks applicants for the inaugural cohort of its Just Tech Fellowship. The Just Tech Fellowship supports and mobilizes diverse and cross-sector cohorts of researchers and practitioners to imagine and create more just, equitable, and representative technological futures.” Deadlines for expressions of interest is January 2, 2022.

OSTP RFI – Public and Private Sector Uses of Biometric Technologies

“The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) put out a Request for Information (RFI) on uses of biometric technologies in the public and private sector.” Deadline for responses is January 15, 2022.

Nominations Open for CRA Distinguished Service and A. Nico Habermann Awards

“The Computing Research Association invites nominations for the 2022 CRA Distinguished Service Award and A. Nico Habermann Award.” Deadline for nominations is January 31, 2022.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Assets  




The eScience Institute’s Data Science for Social Good program is now accepting applications for student fellows and project leads for the 2021 summer session. Fellows will work with academic researchers, data scientists and public stakeholder groups on data-intensive research projects that will leverage data science approaches to address societal challenges in areas such as public policy, environmental impacts and more. Student applications due 2/15 – learn more and apply here. DSSG is also soliciting project proposals from academic researchers, public agencies, nonprofit entities and industry who are looking for an opportunity to work closely with data science professionals and students on focused, collaborative projects to make better use of their data. Proposal submissions are due 2/22.

 


Tools & Resources



Our 2021 Data Science Institution Updates are now LIVE!

Twitter, Academic Data Science Alliance


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These 2-pagers come from a selection of institutions participating in our Data Science Leadership Summits.

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