Deadline: 12 October 2018
Applications are open for “AI and the News: An Open Challenge” which is organized and funded by the Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, a hybrid research effort and philanthropic fund that seeks to ensure that technologies of automation and machine learning are researched, developed, and deployed in a way that vindicate social values of fairness, human autonomy and justice.
Artificial intelligence and its subfield of machine learning is reshaping the landscape of news and information. From the algorithms filtering what they see on social media, to the use of machine learning to generate news stories and online content, AI has and will continue to play a major role in shaping what and how information is distributed and consumed.
As researchers and companies continue to advance the technical state of the art, they believe that it is necessary to ensure that AI serves the public good. This means not only working to address the problems presented by existing AI systems, but articulating what realistic, better alternatives might look like.
Funding Information
This open challenge, which will award up to $750,000 to a range of projects.
Specific Problems
- Governing the Platforms: Ensuring that AI serves the public good requires the public to know how the platforms are deploying these technologies and how they shape the flow of information through the web today. However, as many others have pointed out, the level of transparency and accountability around these decisions has been limited, and they are seeking ideas that help to raise it. This might be new policies in the form of draft legislation, or technical tools that help keep an eye on the information ecosystem.
- Stopping Bad Actors: AI might be applied by a variety of actors to spread disinformation, from powering believable bots on social media to fabricating realistic video and audio. This exacerbates a range of existing problems in news and information. They are seeking approaches can take to detect and counter this next generation of propaganda.
- Empowering Journalism: Journalists play a major role in shaping public understanding of AI, its impact on the information ecosystem, and what they should do to ensure the technology is used ethically. But it can be hard to keep up with the latest developments in the technical research and communicate them effectively to society at large. They are seeking ideas that will help bolster this community in this important work, and give them the tools they need to effectively communicate about AI and its impact.
- Reimagining AI and News: It is easy to find a lot of things to critique about the influence that automation and AI have on the news and information space. More challenging is articulating plausible alternatives for how these platforms should be designed and how they should deploy these technologies. They are interested in ideas that paint a picture of the future: How might platforms from smartphones and social media sites to search engines and online news outlets be redesigned in part or entirely to better serve the public good?
Eligibility Criteria
- This challenge is open to anyone.
- They are looking for journalists, designers, technologists, activists, entrepreneurs, artists, lawyers from a variety of communities around the world anyone who thinks they have a good idea about addressing these problems that may not have been tried before.
How to Apply
Applicants can apply online via given website.
For more information, please visit AI and the News.