Thirty years ago, when arXiv was launched, many felt optimistic about the potential of the internet to foster a better-informed citizenry and to level the playing field between the information haves and have-nots. With new platforms like arXiv, academia led the way. But now, those original ideals seem elusive, with political polarization so exacerbated by information echo chambers that there is no longer even agreement about what constitutes objective evidence. With stakes so high, perhaps we in academia can retake the lead we held 30 years ago and restore some of those expectations, by modelling how information can be responsibly and productively shared. [full text]
Belmont University President Greg Jones and his team are preparing to spend millions of dollars to build a portfolio of data science programs aimed at connecting with regional employers’ growing need for expertise in the field.
Jones has recruited Charlie Apigian from Middle Tennessee State University to be the executive director of the Belmont Data Collaborative, which will work with Belmont’s 13 colleges and adult education programs as well as businesses and nonprofits to bring skilled graduates and “an ethical compass” to the rapidly growing use of data across environments.
When listening to music with friends, people often face an age-old problem: the fight for rights to the aux cord.
In December 2019, UNC students Galen Krugly and William Cahan realized that the classic debacle was an opportunity to revolutionize the way people listen to music in shared environments.
Now, almost two years later, the duo plans to launch an app to solve this, called Aux.
“There’s music overhead 90 percent of the time when you’re out and about,” Krugly said. “Why aren’t we providing a platform to allow people to take control of these listening environments?”
“We’d never seen anything like that before,” said Ranulfo Mayoral, 56, son of Pachico Mayoral, one of the earliest proprietors of the region’s whale-watching ecotourism businesses. “This is a safe place for whales. It’s not where they die.”
What Mayoral was witnessing was the start of a leviathan die-off that, for 2½ years, has alarmed legions of whale watchers and perplexed scientists up and down the western coast of North America. Gray whales are known for being hardy and resilient — “the jeeps of the ocean,” as retired U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biologist Wayne Perryman calls them — but something has gone badly wrong.
Scientists are now scrambling to figure out what is killing these 40-foot-long marine mammals. The “what” is anything but obvious.
“This is by no means the end of insurance,” but it does represent a wake-up call for the industry, said David Bresch, former head of Swiss Re’s Sustainability & Political Risk Management Unit.
Reducing risks for companies and other policyholders won’t be easy. The big solutions are largely something insurers can’t do: rapidly reducing fossil fuel combustion and other emissions cuts while scaling up global resilience and adaptation efforts.
But improvements can be made, such as expanding the pool of those insured, said Bresch, now a professor for weather and climate risks at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich and MeteoSwiss. The Swiss system provides expansive coverage for catastrophic losses and requires property owners to be covered—a key driver to spreading risk and keeping policies affordable, he said.
Zesty.ai has developed a model called Z-FIRE that uses aerial imagery, data from connected devices, climate studies and machine learning to provide more accurate wildfire risk assessments.
“In the past, risk has been explained at the regional level,” [Attila] Toth says. “But with the advent of Big Data, and aerial imagery and other data sources that can be analyzed with artificial intelligence, we can build models that are very precise and look at risk at the individual property level.”
Bloomberg Wealth + Equality; Sophie Alexander, Szu Yu Chen and Shera Avi-Yonah
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A Bloomberg News survey accounting for $4.3 billion in 375 grants to nonprofits reveals for the first time how the philanthropist is directing her charitable might.
The bears and Indigenous humans of coastal British Columbia have more in common than meets the eye. The two have lived side by side for millennia in this densely forested region on the west coast of Canada. But it’s the DNA that really stands out: A new analysis has found that the grizzlies here form three distinct genetic groups, and these groups align closely with the region’s three Indigenous language families.
It’s a “mind-blowing” finding that shows how cultural and biological diversity in the region are intertwined, says Jesse Popp, an Indigenous environmental scientist at the University of Guelph who was not involved with the work.
Miami Dade College (MDC) has partnered with the AI4ALL College Pathways initiative to introduce and prepare students for careers in the burgeoning Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry.
AI4ALL College Pathways is an initiative designed to spark interest and increase persistence in AI-related careers for undergraduate students who represent new voices in AI. The program offerings are co-hosted with universities to connect participants with an approachable introduction to AI, internships, career-readiness resources, and a supportive on-campus peer community.
“We are very excited to create an AI community at MDC,” said Antonio Delgado, Dean of MDC’s School of Engineering and Technology (EnTec). “This strategic collaboration with AI4ALL will accelerate the implementation of AI courses at the college to educate a diverse AI talent pool.”
Data is everywhere in the digital world, and it’s helping drive decision-making in organizations across every industry.
Employers have a need for workers who understand how to make sense of it all and apply that insight to action.
The University of Missouri–St. Louis has launched a Bachelor of Science in Data Science and Analysis degree program to help students get the knowledge and skills they need to understand and analyze data in their chosen field.
The interdisciplinary program, recently approved by the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, includes emphasis areas in biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, social science and supply chain analytics. Students can begin enrolling in the program in the fall semester.
The proliferation of artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making has helped shape myriad aspects of our society: From facial recognition to deep fake technology to criminal justice and health care, their applications are seemingly endless. Across these contexts, the story of applied algorithmic decision-making is one of both promise and peril. Given the novelty, scale, and opacity involved in many applications of these technologies, the stakes are often incredibly high.
This is the introduction to FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter’s whitepaper: Algorithms and Economic Justice: A Taxonomy of Harms and a Path Forward for the Federal Trade Commission. If you have been keeping up with data-driven and algorithmic decision-making, analytics, machine learning, AI, and their applications, you can tell it’s spot on. The 63-page Whitepaper does not disappoint.
Slaughter worked on the whitepaper with her FTC colleagues Janice Kopec and Mohamad Batal. Their work was supported by Immuta, and it has just been published as part of the Yale Law School Information Society Project Digital Future Whitepapers series.
As data science and artificial intelligence transform a range of fields, the University of Georgia is making a significant investment in faculty with expertise in using big data to address some of society’s most urgent challenges.
The Presidential Interdisciplinary Faculty Hiring Initiative in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence aims to recruit 50 faculty members who will educate students and advance research in data science and AI. Rather than being housed exclusively in a single department, however, the majority of UGA’s newly recruited faculty will focus on the fusion of data science and AI in cross-cutting areas such as infectious diseases, integrative precision agriculture, ethics, cybersecurity, resilient communities and the environment.
Beginning in fall 2021, students will have the opportunity to earn a bachelor’s degree in information management and technology online through the School of Information Studies (iSchool). The new online program allows students seeking a part-time degree to have access to the same education as full-time, on-campus students.
The program focuses on developing essential skills for a career in information technology. Students will explore important topics like cybersecurity, machine learning, AI and cloud computing while expanding their skills in leadership, project management and business. Upon graduation, students will also have an extensive knowledge of data science and information systems.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is announcing a new center designed to advance the use of forecasting and outbreak analytics in public health decision making. Once established, the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics will bring together next-generation public health data, expert disease modelers, public health emergency responders, and high-quality communications, to meet the needs of decision makers. The new center will accelerate access to and use of data for public health decision-makers who need information to mitigate the effects of disease threats, such as social and economic disruption. The center will prioritize equity and accessibility, while serving as a hub for innovation and research on disease modeling.
“This is an amazing opportunity for CDC and public health as we stand up the country’s first government-wide public health forecasting center,” said CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky, M.D., M.P.H. “We are excited to have the expertise and ability to model and forecast public health concerns and share information in real-time to activate governmental, private sector, and public actions in anticipation of threats both domestically and abroad.”
Baker, NV September 9-11, “The events start on Thursday, September 9, with solar viewing during the day then “Art in the Dark” program that evening. On Friday evening guest speakers include Cole Niebuhr, of Concordia University and the Great Basin Observatory. Saturday evening features the festival’s keynote speaker, Dr. Charles Liu, from the American Museum of Natural History.”
Online September 6-10. “The Enterprise Applications of the R Language Conference (EARL) is a cross-sector conference focusing on the commercial use of the R programming language. The conference is dedicated to the real-world usage of R with some of the world’s leading practitioners.” [registration required]
We’re recruiting leaders from industry, government, non-profits, and academia to participate on our Community Advisory Panel (CAP) and related stakeholder input activities:
“We offer early-career scientists a unique opportunity to address pressing modeling challenges in infectious diseases epidemiology!” Review of applications begins on October 1.
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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.
Over the past decade, machine learning (ML) has become a critical component of countless applications and services in a variety of domains. Fields ranging from healthcare to autonomous vehicles have been transformed by the use of ML techniques.
Machine learning’s increasing importance to real-world applications brought awareness of a new field focused on ML in practice – machine learning systems (or, as some call it, MLOps). This field acts as a bridging point between the domains of computer systems and machine learning, considering the new challenges of machine learning with a lens shaped by traditional systems research.
After a lot of angst over the past few years around undercount, representation, and anonymization, the Census Bureau released detailed data from the 2020 decennial census
Paradoxically, data is the most under-valued and
de-glamorised aspect of AI
–Everyone wants to do the model work, not the data work: Data Cascades in High-Stakes AI by Nithya Sambasivan @shivanikapania
Hannah Highfill @NaaShomeh
@heuristicity
@laroyo
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