Panel: Industry Response to Government Procurement Policy  Get details and register Companies that develop and sell AI technologies to governments discuss how procurement guidelines influenced or will influence product development. Before and after examples show how privacy, transparency, fairness, and other ethical considerations can be embedded into AI technologies.  Welcome from Lillian F. Mills (Interim Dean, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin). Panel chair is Joydeep Ghosh (Good Systems Research Director for Fair and Transparent AI, The University of Texas at Austin) Panelists include Steve Elmore (Head of Client Services, KUNGFU.AI), Will Griffin (Chief Ethics Officer, Hypergiant), and Shaoshan Liu (Chief Executive Officer, PerceptIn).  Part of the Week with the World Economic Forum events taking place March 22 - 26, 2021.

Panel: AI Procurement Policy for State, Regional, and Local Governments  Get details and register The WEF procurement guidelines were designed for national governments. But state, regional, and local governments will also purchase AI technologies. How can procurement guidelines be helpful to local governments as they think about purchasing AI technologies that will help them create smart cities?  Welcome from Michelle Addington (Dean, School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin). Panel chair is Kay Firth-Butterfield (Head of AI & ML, Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, World Economic Forum and Fellow, Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law, The University of Texas at Austin). Panelists include Coral Evans (Former Mayor of Flagstaff, AZ)), Alex Goldberg (Texas Strategic Engagement Lead, Defense Innovation Unit), Sherri Greenberg (Good Systems Research Director for Future of Work, The University of Texas at Austin), Jeff Merritt (Head of Internet of Things and Urban Transformation and Member of Executive Committee, World Economic Forum), and Kirk Scanlon (Capital Improvement Program Manager, Austin Transportation Department’s Smart Mobility Office)   Part of the Week with the World Economic Forum events taking place March 22 - 26, 2021

Workshop for Graduate Students Closed session This workshop for graduate students helps them understand how to advance technology policy generally, and AI policy specifically. Welcome from Eric Meyer (Dean, School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin), facilitated by Kenneth R. Fleischmann (Founding Chair, Good Systems Executive Team), and presentations from Kay Firth-Butterfield (Head of AI & ML, Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, World Economic Forum and Fellow, Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law, The University of Texas at Austin), and Conor Sanchez (Project Specialist, World Economic Forum).  Part of the Week with the World Economic Forum events taking place March 22 - 26, 2021.

Fireside Chat: The Importance of Sharing Work Globally on AI and Ethics Get details and register Welcome: Jay Hartzell President, The University of Texas at Austin Fireside chat featuring: Kay Firth-Butterfield Head of AI & ML, Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, World Economic Forum Fellow, Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law, The University of Texas at Austin  Panel Chair: Sharon Strover Good Systems Executive Team Member, The University of Texas at Austin Panelists: Christine Dixon Thiesing (Associate Vice President for Research Innovation and Economic Impact, The University of Texas at Austin), Junfeng Jiao (Good Systems Executive Team Chair, The University of Texas at Austin), S. Craig Watkins (Good Systems Research Director for Racial Justice, The University of Texas at Austin)  Part of the Week with the World Economic Forum events taking place March 22 - 26, 2021.

Event description forthcoming, you can learn more about the speakers and discussants now. This roundtable is part of the Institute for Historical Studies' theme in 2020-2021 on "Climate in Context: Historical Precedents and the Unprecedented."

Tara Zimmerman (Postdoctoral fellow, School of Information) will present on "Social Noise: How Relationships Influence the Spread of Disinformation. " Email goodsystems@austin.utexas.edu to request the meeting information.

In this talk, Yueyue Fan will share a new error estimation method for identifying systematic errors for sensors deployed in a traffic network.  This approach integrates statistics and transportation domain knowledge, specifically the spatial interdependence of traffic flows, to enable identification of the health conditions of road sensors as well as correction of the biased data. Dr. Yueyue Fan is a professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Davis.  She is currently serving as the program director of the Civil Infrastructure Systems (CIS) program at the National Science Foundation.  Her research is on transportation and energy infrastructure systems modeling and analysis, with special interest in integrating applied mathematics and engineering domain knowledge to address challenges brought by system uncertainty, dynamics, and indeterminacy issues. Part of the Smart Cities Consortium.

COGSEC will be a two-day, virtual event March 4-5 focusing on practical skills related to investigating and thwarting media manipulation and disinformation campaigns online.

The online conference will serve as a forum for sharing what works and what doesn’t, for piecing together knowledge about the state-of-the-art tactics being used by malicious actors in the field, and for building the ethical norms of security research in this domain.  COGSEC will feature practical workshops on hunting and neutralizing online influence campaigns. We welcome students, scholars, journalists, activists, NGO professionals, and anyone with an interest in the real-world tools and techniques being used to deal with media manipulation threats in the field.

Registration is now open!