AIhub monthly digest: May 2021 – ocean studies, defining AI, and philosophy of mind

Welcome to our May 2021 monthly digest where you can catch up with any AIhub stories you may have missed, get the low-down on recent events, and much more. In this edition we look at research into the oceans, AI and philosophy of mind, and highlight some interesting podcasts.

Life below water

This month we focused on the UN sustainable development goal (SDG) of life below water. We interviewed Nayat Sánchez-Pi, director of Inria Chile and leader of the OcéanIA project. The project team is developing new artificial intelligence and mathematical modelling tools to contribute to the understanding of the oceans and their role in regulating and sustaining the biosphere, and tackling climate change. In the interview, Nayat explained the challenges of research in the field, what they are working on as part of the project, and the role that AI methods play.

You can find out more about this exciting project, and about the Tara Microbiome-CEODOS expedition, in this article.

Researchers from the University of Barcelona have developed an open access, deep learning-based web app that will enable the detection and quantification of floating plastics in the sea with a reliability of over 80%. Read about it here.

The Mayflower autonomous ship (a fully-autonomous, AI powered marine research vessel) is close to launch. The team is just carrying out some final tests before it sets sail on its data collection mission. You can get updates here. Follow on instagram here.

AI, cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind

In this interview, AIhub ambassador Anil Ozdemir spoke to Ali Boyle about her research into artificial intelligence, cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind. Ali focuses on theoretical questions about nonhuman minds: what are nonhuman minds like, and how can we learn about them?

What we need to talk about when we talk about AI

In this excellent article, Virginia Dignum considers how we define AI and why this is important for the purposes of regulation.

Awards and recognition this month

On May 12, the Association for Computing Machinery granted Ayanna Howard this year’s Athena Lecturer Award, which recognizes women who have made fundamental contributions in computer science. You can read an interview with Ayanna, where she talked to Karen Hao about AI, robotics, building trustworthy systems and more, here.

This month, Timnit Gebru was named as one of the world’s 50 greatest leaders by Fortune magazine.

Podcasts

In this fun and informative podcast, Dave Ackley and Michael Littman chat with Tina Eliassi-Rad of Northeastern’s Network Science Institute about topics ranging from graph structures and machine learning to AI ethics and the nature of democracy.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ll be cross-posting episodes from Ben Byford’s podcast: The Machine Ethics Podcast. In this episode, Josie Young talks about making businesses more efficient, how the AI ethics landscape changed over the last five years, ethics roles and collaborations, feminist AI and chatbots, disinformation’s risk to democracy and more…

Data capitalism and algorithmic racism

Data for Black Lives have released a report in which they discuss data capitalism and algorithmic racism. You can find the full pdf version here. Along with their new report, they have built a micro site to help people learn more about these topics. You can visit the site here.

New offices for CLAIRE

The Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe (CLAIRE) has announced the launch of four new offices. These will be located in Zürich, Oslo, Paris and Brussels and will complement the existing offices in The Hague, Prague, Rome and Saarbrücken. The virtual launch roadshow began on 26 May with the Zürich office – further events are taking place in June.

Queer in AI, Black in AI, and Widening NLP end sponsorship relationship with Google

On 10 May, the organizers of Black in AI, Queer in AI, and Widening NLP wrote an open letter Google concerning their sponsorship relationship. You can read their joint statement here.

A new platform for AI4EU

AI4EU is a European consortium bringing together AI stakeholders and resources. On 20 May, they migrated to a new platform which you can find here.

Physics World AI collection

The team at Physics World have put together this collection of articles about artificial intelligence. As well as covering various physics-related topics, they also focus on algorithmic bias, ethical issues and AI in everyday life.

Lucy Smith is Senior Managing Editor for AIhub.

Lucy Smith is Senior Managing Editor for AIhub.