GIS technologies, which use geographical data to map and analyze real-world problems, have immense potential to help us better understand public health issues, as well as to guide efforts to improve the overall wellness of individuals and communities. This seminar will allow participants to learn more about GIS research on campus and to kickstart a conversation about new opportunities across UT in the service of the Whole Communities–Whole Health mission. Learn more and register. Part of the Whole Communities–Whole Health Interdisciplinary Seminar Series.  

In this presentation, Tara Zimmerman (CI2020 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Information) will discuss her qualitative research on social media users' information behavior which led her to coin the term "social noise." She will also introduce her next project which focuses on the technological affordances of Facebook and how those are perceived by users. Learn more and register.  Part of the Good Systems Postdoc Interest Group presentation series.

Given the on-going digital revolution and our present-day sustainability challenges, we have to reinvent the way cities and societies are operated. Dirk Helbing (Professor of Computational Social Science, ETH Zurich) proposes that the requirement of organizing societies in a more resilient way implies the need for distributed solutions, based on digitally assisted self-organization, and that this concept is also compatible with sustainability requirements and stronger democratic participation. In particular, Dirk will discuss the role that self-control approaches can play in the age of AI. Learn more and add to your calendar. Part of the Texas Smart Cities presentation series.

The real-time city is real! As layers of networks and digital information blanket urban space, new approaches to studying the built environment are emerging. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed — as are the tools we use to design them. The Senseable City Laboratory's mission—a research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — is to anticipate these changes and study them from a critical point of view. This presentation will cover various SCL projects that showcase its engagement with societal issues to create better urban living. Learn more and add to your calendar.  Part of the Texas Smart Cities presentation series.

In this talk, Prof. Hardt will share some archaeology of the UCI Adult dataset, discuss its impact on the fairness community and highlight some of its limitations. He will then introduce the audience to a new collection of datasets derived from US Census data sources that vastly extend the existing data ecosystem for research on fair machine learning. These new datasets surface a range of empirical insights relevant to ongoing debates about statistical fairness criteria and algorithmic fairness interventions. Learn more and register! 

This study examines the documents circulated among biomedical equipment repair technicians in order to build a conceptual model that accounts for multi-layered temporality in technical healthcare professional communities. A metadata analysis informed by digital forensics and trace ethnography is employed to model the overlapping temporal, format-related, and annotation characteristics present in a corpus of repair manual files crowdsourced during collaborations between volunteer archivists and professional technicians. Based on the results of this analysis, James A. Hodges (Bullard Research Fellow, School of Information) presents findings that can assist in the development and implementation of information services and technologies for working biomedical repair technicians. Register now!  Part of Good Systems' Postdoc Interest Group.

April 22-23, 2021. Free and open to the public Streaming online This conference brings together diverse scholars whose work grapples with the challenges that climate change presents to the discipline of history. Participants will address precedents for this “unprecedented” crisis by uncovering and analyzing the historical roots and analogues of contemporary climate change across a wide range of eras and areas around the world. Can history offer an alternative to visions of the future that appear to be determined by prevailing climate models, and help provide us with new ways of understanding human agency?  Conference program, registration, and additional details forthcoming. Stay up to date on conference announcements by following the Institute for Historical Studies on Twitter and Facebook. Queries: cmeador@austin.utexas.edu.

Join Kate Crawford and Simone Browne in conversation on Crawford's groundbreaking new book Atlas of AI: Power, Politics and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Drawing on over a decade of research, Atlas of AI is a rigorous interrogation of the power relations that undergird artificial intelligence - from the stories we are sold about datasets and digital assistants, to mineral extraction and the exploitative labor conditions that sustain AI. Hosted by Good Systems' Critical Surveillance Inquiry RFA. Learn more and register now! 

This session of the Austin Forum will bring a panel of UT Austin faculty to share recent findings and lessons from developing fair and transparent AI technologies. In addition to being part of Good Systems, all of the faculty are also members of UT’s interdisciplinary Machine Learning Laboratory. Learn more and register. 

Featured Speakers

Matthew Lease, Associate Professor, The University of Texas at Austin, School of Information Maria De-Arteaga, Professor, The University of Texas at Austin, Information, Risk and Operation Management Department Joydeep Ghosh, Professor, The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Chief Scientist, CognitiveScale Raymond J. Mooney, Professor, The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Computer Science Min Kyung Lee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, The University of Texas at Austin, School of Information

Learn about Dell Technologies’ strategic vision for the future, including how AI will need to be developed over the next years to achieve their long-term goals. Dell’s decisions will help lay the groundwork for the future of the AI job market. Our conversation with company leaders also will help spur future collaborative opportunities between Dell Technologies and UT Good Systems. Presentation from Michael Shepherd (Distinguished Engineer, Dell Technologies) and Brons Larson (AI Strategy Lead, Dell Technologies).  Register now! Part of the Future of Work Research Presentation series.