The Texas Water Research Network provides a forum and encouragement for research about water science, management, and policy. Solutions to Texas’ water challenges will be addressed through new knowledge, innovative approaches, as well as through the synthesis of existing knowledge. This is of special significance for Texas water challenges related to the rapid population growth and projected changing water availability in the state in the 21st Century. Learn more about the two-day conference and register here.

Please join us Friday, April 26, for a research showcase in engineering's beautiful Mulva Auditorium. Planet Texas 2050 researchers and community partner organizations will present their work from the first year and reflect on how we're doing and where we're going as an interdisciplinary grand challenge. We'll also demonstrate tools and approaches we're developing and we'll have a mini “field trip” to Waller Creek. This will be an interactive event with oral and poster presentations as well as discussion sessions and opportunities for feedback. We want to show you the progress we're making and meet with potential partners who might join us on future projects. Click here to register and learn more.

Ubiquitous recorders are capturing our daily sounds on the street, at our work and leisure places, and in our homes. The study of the cultural, political, ethical, and technological impact of automating sound and incorporating it into different systems is in its infancy, and scholars and technologists often do not have a good understanding of what kind of data, what kind of techniques and algorithms, and what kinds of interpretations can be drawn from audio data in systems that use A.I. technologies. This event is part of our Acoustic Surveillance and Big Data Series. In this talk, Doug Oard will review the technologies that have brought us these challenges and opportunities, and he'll identify some remaining technical challenges that currently limit their reach and application. He will then focus on the interplay between technology and policy that will shape the ways in which we might seek to achieve a balance between the risks and benefits that this cornucopia of new information could offer.

Ubiquitous recorders are capturing our daily sounds on the street, at our work and leisure places, and in our homes. The study of the cultural, political, ethical, and technological impact of automating sound and incorporating it into different systems is in its infancy, and scholars and technologists often do not have a good understanding of what kind of data, what kind of techniques and algorithms, and what kinds of interpretations can be drawn from audio data in systems that use A.I. technologies. This event is part of our Acoustic Surveillance and Big Data Series and will ask participants to identify their research objectives with sound and use computational analytics to analyze sound files. Questions to consider will include what is the nature of the quantification of sound? What does it mean to break sound down into feature sets for big data analysis? 

Led by Professor Robin Mansell from the London School of Economics and Political Science. We will examine a fundamentally important question for the future of society: Is there ever likely to be an effective challenge to the pursuit of wealth through inequitable mass individualization? The ‘platformization of everything’ — by Google, Baidu, Facebook, Amazon and a few others — is implicated in the spread of misinformation and in the deepening of many kinds of inequalities. This lecture explores reasons for the persistence of cautious and relatively weak policy responses to platform power and whether a turn to radical democratic theory and practice might help to promote policy responses that work as a counterpoint to platform dominance. This event is part of the Digital Media Speaker Series and is sponsored by the Technology and Information Policy Institute (TIPI) and Good Systems.

Ubiquitous recorders are capturing our daily sounds on the street, at our work and leisure places, and in our homes. The study of the cultural, political, ethical, and technological impact of automating sound and incorporating it into different systems is in its infancy, and scholars and technologists often do not have a good understanding of what kind of data, what kind of techniques and algorithms, and what kinds of interpretations can be drawn from audio data in systems that use A.I. technologies. This event is part of our Acoustic Surveillance and Big Data Series and will ask participants what social and personal values are at play in given scenarios involving sound and voice recording and what concerns they have in terms of potential ethical or policy issues. 

Regulation and Responsibility: Join Microsoft’s Julie Brill, corporate VP and deputy general counsel, for a fireside chat and Q/A with Professor Sharon Strover from the Moody College of Communication. They’ll cover privacy, data protection, and tech policy.

Led by Dean Eric Meyer from the School of Information. The story of society is inextricably bound with the rise of tools and machines. In the digital age, the machines we have created have become immensely powerful on the one hand but are also limited in many ways. This talk uses examples from research over the last decade — including citizen science, digital scholarship, crisis response, and knowledge creation on the internet — to explore how humans and machines work jointly and independently in complex socio-technical assemblages. This event is part of the Digital Media Speaker Series at the Moody College of Communication.

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Join Sam Woolley from Institute of the Future at UT's Digital Media Speaker Series this month. The current wave of computational propaganda has taken the world by surprise. Technology firms, policy makers, journalists and the general public are scrambling to respond to the societal threats posed by disinformation and politically motivated trolling. This talk outlines one method for responding to these issues: the Ethical Operating System (ethicalOS.org), a toolkit for anticipating future uses of technology. Jane McGonigal and Samuel Woolley, with support from Omidyar Network, constructed this guide to help a wide variety of groups think about how to design technology with democracy and human rights in mind. The toolkit has been used by major companies in Silicon Valley, by legislators at the state and federal level and by students in Stanford's design school and intro to computer science courses. It's time, however, to put into the hands of the U.S. public so that they can help in the fight against disinformation and manipulative technology.