What does it mean for AI to be innovative, and does new always mean better, particularly in terms of the ethical and societal implications of AI? Join us to hear Stephen C. Slota (Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Information) present on his research. 

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!

The Austin AI Housing Analysis is a Year 2 Good Systems Project that aims to build a predictive AI system that can test past and future regulatory scenarios and help inform affordable residential development policies in Austin. This talk will cover preliminary research to date into how affordable housing in Austin has changed over time and how developmental policies over the past several decades have both encouraged and discouraged affordable housing differently throughout the city. Junfeng Jiao is an associate professor in the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the chair of UT Good Systems Grand Challenge, chair of the Smart City Bridging Discipline Program, and director of the Urban Information Lab. Junfeng’s research focuses on urban informatics and machine learning, particularly how different technologies come together to create smart cities and how those affect people’s behaviors. He coined the term of “transit desert” and measured it in all major U.S. cities. His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the NSF, the Department of Transportation, the Texas Department of Transportation, the Washington Department of Transportation, UT Austin, Intel, and Google and reported by popular national media outlets such as ABC, Associated Press, CNN, CityLab, Fox News, NBC, NPR, New York Times, and Wired. He received his doctorate in urban planning and design from the University of Washington. Josh Conrad is a doctoral candidate in the School of Architecture studying new GIS methodologies for building and landscape research. He is currently a data researcher with the Urban Information Lab as well as with UT Libraries. His doctoral research studies the history and future of equity-oriented GIS data practices in historic preservation. Additionally, he works professionally as a data consultant with the historic preservation firm HHM & Associates in Austin. Part of the Smart Cities Consortium.

Ahmer Arif (Assistant Professor, School of Information) will sharing his work on: "Troubling matters:  Examining the spread of misinformation and disinformation on social media during mass disruption events." Email goodsystems@austin.utexas.edu to request the meeting information.

Matt Lease (Associate Professor, School of Information) will lead the first research presentation from the Future of Work Research Focus Area. Social media platforms must detect and block a variety of unacceptable user-generated content, such such as adult or violent images. This detection task is difficult to automate due to high accuracy requirements, costs of errors, and nuanced rules for what is and is not acceptable. Consequently, platforms rely on a vast and largely invisible workforce of human moderators to filter such content. However, mounting evidence suggests that exposure to disturbing content can cause lasting psychological and emotional damage to some moderators. To mitigate such harm, we investigate a set of blur-based moderation interfaces for reducing exposure to disturbing content whilst preserving moderator ability to quickly and accurately flag it. We find that interactive blurring designs can reduce emotional impact without sacrificing moderation accuracy and speed. See our online demo at: http://ir.ischool.utexas.edu/CM/demo/.   Register now!

The cumulative effects of agriculture, industrialization, and urbanization are unequivocally changing our climate and producing globally unprecedented challenges related to food production, building materials, and human and ecosystem health, and exacerbating conditions that promote the spread of pandemic diseases, and these challenges are disproportionately affecting low-income communities and communities of color. This is not new. Our built environments create impacts on all of the above forces, and play a critical role in the creation of, and potential dismantling of, inequitable conditions of living and human and ecosystem health. How do we as designers of buildings and cities contribute to climate change and its deeply-rooted, systemic impacts, and what can we do now to turn our impact positive? How do we recognize, through our planning and building processes, the links between human health in our communities, particularly in communities of color, and the health of the planet and its ecosystems? How do we designing for climate justice, carbon neutrality, and equitable impact of positive change? And how do we reform our pedagogical approaches in our academies to ensure equitable climate considerations “go without saying”? Learn more. 

Paul Sabin will discuss lessons learned from the history of energy and climate, including how our historical understanding has changed in the past decade. How fast can we transform our energy system, and what factors will determine how this change unfolds? What historical insights might inform strategies pursued by the new presidential administration, or by state and local governments? Important developments include the falling cost of solar and wind energy, the decline of coal, and bitter political and cultural conflicts over environmental regulation, land use, and transportation. The changing context created by climate-influenced fire and flooding also will be considered. Sabin will consider the competing grounds for optimism and despair in thinking about our energy and climate future. Learn more and register.  This talk is part of the Institute for Historical Studies' theme in 2020-2021 on "Climate in Context: Historical Precedents and the Unprecedented."

It is very easy to fall into the trap of putting sensors around town to collect data, without developing a data strategy. It is important to think through what data is being collected, how it will be stored, and what problems it will help us solve.  “Smart solutions” should be offered to everyone, so that new technology does not exacerbate societal inequality. Presenters Stephen Elkins (Texas Client Director, Microsoft) and Raamel Mitchell (Citizenship and Market Development Director for the Central United States, Microsoft) will discuss specific use cases where government can use AI to fill resource gaps.   Part of the Smart Cities Consortium.

This panel is hosted by Good Systems' Critical Surveillance Inquiry Research Focus Area. We work with scholars, organizations and communities to curate conversations, exhibitions and research that examine the social and ethical implications of surveillance technologies, both AI-enabled and not. With a focus on algorithmic harm and tech equity, we continually question “what’s good?” in order to better understand the development and impact of artificial intelligence. Panelists include Iván Chaar-Lopez (Assistant Professor, American Studies), Sam Lavigne (Assistant Professor, School of Design), Erin McElroy (Postdoctoral Researcher, New York University, AI Now Institute), and Critical Surveillance Inquiry Research Director Simone Browne (Associate Professor, African and African Diaspora Studies). Moderated by Good Systems Executive Team member Tanya Clement (Associate Professor, English). Register now! 

Join us to hear a recent graduate and PhD candidate present their research in areas of Public Interest Technology, followed by informal question and answer.