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July 2024 Issue
Table of Contents:
- Get Ready to SAIL
- OAC Office Hours
- The Latest from AIVO Workshops
- Cross-Cutting Research Across Three NSF-funded National AI Institutes on Education
- AI Augmented Learning for All: Challenges and Opportunities
- INVITEd Talk: Understanding Ethics of AI
- Happenings in SIGs
- SIG at the AI for Agriculture Summit
- Launch of Team Science Education in Project Management SIG
- Competition and Workshop: Machine Learning for Cyber-Agricultural Systems
Get Ready to SAIL
Register now for the Summit for AI Institutes Leadership conference!
Don’t miss SAIL 24 — happening October 7-10 at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center. Both in-person and remote options are available. Registration is $350. Remote participation registration is $150. Starting September 1, registration is $500. Conference registration includes admission to Expo Day at Carnegie Mellon University on October 10.
Visit the SAIL 24 Registration page for prices and details for each option.
The SAIL 24 Program page includes a list of sessions and will be updated with additional speakers soon. Stay tuned for those updates. Check out our FAQs page for answers to many common questions.
Questions or comments? Contact us at aivo@ucdavis.edu.
NSF's OAC to Host Cyberinfrastructure Office Hours
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) Concierge Team is planning to host Cyberinfrastructure (CI) office hours for the AI Institutes, and they want to learn what questions researchers have for them about NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure resources available to the AI Institutes community.
Post your questions in the Infrastructure Requirements and Questions form. Your responses will be the inputs for the CI office hours, which will be held soon after form responses are received.
Please share the form with all your Institute staff. OAC wants to hear from every researcher, including all students involved in your center, who are interested in using these systems for their research: Resource Catalog.
The Latest from AIVO Workshops
Cross-Cutting Research Across Three NSF-funded National AI Institutes on Education
On April 13, 2024, an AIVO-sponsored workshop was held in Philadelphia, PA at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2024 National Conference to share an outcomes report on “Cross-Cutting Research Across Three NSF-funded National AI Institutes on Education.”
Professor Chris Dede, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Professor Quentin Biddy, University of Colorado-Boulder; and Professor James Lester, North Carolina State University, represented AI-ALOE, iSAT, and EngageAI, respectively.
Workshop topics included AI and education among these Institutes, namely AI-based agents that interact with instructors and learners, participatory design with users, a focus on motivation as well as learning, ethical use of AI, and modification of initial research plans to include the rapid evolution of generative AI.
AI Augmented Learning for All: Challenges and Opportunities
On June 9, 2024, the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) Workshop, “AI Augmented Learning for All: Challenges and Opportunities” took place at the University of Buffalo in Buffalo, NY. Workshop organizers Jinjun Xiong (AI4ExceptionalEd), Ranga Setlur (AI4ExceptionalEd), and Jonathan Rowe (AI-ALOE) were instrumental in coordinating and conducting the session.
The AIVO-sponsored workshop was designed to introduce the learning sciences community to the applicable use cases that the National AI Institutes program addresses, in particular the five AI Institutes related to the learning sciences community – AI-ALOE, EngageAI, iSAT, AI4ExceptionalEd, and INVITE. The five Institutes are dedicated to education, learning, human-AI interactions, and collaboration.
The session covered the Institutes’ AI research activities, the current status of AI advancement and limitations, and how the learning sciences community can engage with the AI Institutes to shape their research programs to more strongly align with ongoing and emerging research in the field.
The workshop included an introduction to the AI Institutes Program, an overview of the five national AI Institutes, demos, a panel discussion on Connecting Learning Science Careers and AI, and three interactive sessions on:
- Multimodality Understanding of a Learning Scenario
- Advancement of Natural Language Understanding in the Midst of Large Language Models
- Automatic Speech Translation for Children
INVITEd Talk: Understanding Ethics of AI
Join us for a Zoom session on July 30, 2024 from 1:30-3:00 pm Central for a talk to introduce the main issues and themes pertaining to the ethics of AI – featuring Dr. Clayton Peterson, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. Register now!
Analyzing what the ethics of AI are by reflecting on our understanding of both ethics and AI, the aim of this session is to clarify and expose how the ethics of AI can be conceived in different ways depending on the approach you adopt.
Using concrete examples, various issues that can be found within the ethics of AI literature will be addressed, allowing researchers to reflect upon their own research and practice. Specific examples relating to AI in education, such as the use of generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT), will be discussed.
This session is co-sponsored by AIVO. Learn more at: www.uqtr.ca/Chaire.Ethique.IA
Happenings in SIGs
SIG at the AI for Agriculture Summit
The AI for Agriculture Summit is coming up soon! Join experts from academia, industry, NGOs, and government agencies July 29–30, 2024 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. to envision how AI can tackle critical global challenges in Ag.
You won’t want to miss the SIG sessions. Check out the agenda to learn more.
Keynote Speakers
- Dr. Manjit Misra, Director, USDA-National Institute of Food & Agriculture (NIFA)
- Greg Hager, Assistant Director – Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Saharah Moon Chapotin, Executive Director, Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR
Together, we will develop a long-term technical vision and implementation strategy for leveraging agricultural AI advancements, starting with a white paper to share recommendations based on discussions held during the summit. The white paper group will begin writing at the conference site on July 31.
Summit Topics
- AI for Sensing/Perception
- AI for Agriculture Robotics
- AI for Crop Improvement
- AI for Decision-Making
- Data Ownership, Intellectual Property, and Labor Policy Considerations
- Environmental and Climate Policy
- Role of Public and Private Funding
Launch of Team Science Education in Project Management SIG
Team Science Education is just now launching within the Project Management SIG. There will be several engagements with Divergent Science, which is conducting sessions this summer and fall, culminating with a SIG session at SAIL 2024.
Jessica Bell (AIIRA) and Norm Gottron (AI-SDM) contacted Hannah Love and Ellen Fisher of Divergent Science LLC to discuss various facilitation and team science training activities for AIVO Project Managers.
The Divergent Science and AIVO collaboration will include:
- Team Science Education for AIVO PMs – A three-step, online training on project management of scientific teams and the Science of Team Science (SciTS), with a combination of a kick-off meeting, online classes, and virtual office hours.
- Training at SAIL
- White Paper and/or Manuscript
After SAIL, members of the PM SIG will share a written resource on what they’ve learned about managing multi-org, multidisciplinary centers.
Competition and Workshop: Machine Learning for Cyber-Agricultural Systems (MLCAS) 2024
Several AIIRA faculty and staff are helping organize MLCAS 2024, and the sixth annual MLCAS competition is underway! The workshop will be held October 7, 2024 in Lincoln, NE.
This is an opportunity for AI Institutes’ graduate, undergraduate, and high school students to participate in the competition for cash prizes and recognition at the MLCAS 2024 workshop.
The challenge this year focuses on the use of satellite imagery datasets from the U.S. Midwest to predict genotype-specific plot-level yield for the 2023 multi-state maize hybrid trials. You don’t need a background in agriculture to apply to the competition.
Important Dates:
- July 1: Start date / Development phase
- August 4: Team composition deadline
- August 18: Start of test phase
- August 28: Final submission deadline
- September 1: Verified winner announced
- October 7: Awards and recognition at MLCAS 2024
You can also submit an extended, two-page abstract for an oral and/or poster presentation. The abstract is due July 31, 2024.
MLCAS 2024 Award Amounts:
- 1st prize: $4,000
- 2nd prize: $3,000
- 3rd prize: $2,000
In addition to those three awards, an additional prize of $1,000 may be awarded to the top team that is composed of only undergraduate or high school students and isn’t among the top three teams overall.
Visit the MLCAS 2024 website for more details. Learn more about the MLCAS competition.
