Thursday, June 13, 2024
Context: In my role as division director of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) at NSF, I’m sending out a short message to the IIS mailing list on the Second Tuesday Every Month (STEM). This is the installment for June 2024.
Hi all,
I decided to wait two days before sending out this month’s update so I could tell you about “AI Aspirations”. Arati Prabhakar is the director for the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. Some of you might know her because she did a stint as the head of DARPA and was involved in funding basic research on computing and other topics. In her current role, she wanted to help convey some of the ways that AI could have positive impacts on the US (and the world) and decided to do something very DARPA-like. She identified a set of “champions” who could pitch potential national-level initiatives on various important public missions. The champions will be making their TED-talk-like proposals in DC today. (I’m on the DC Metro heading to the event right now.) The topics that will be covered are:
Health (making clinical trials more efficient)
Education (supporting teachers providing individualized education)
Weather (making accurate predictions faster)
Clean energy (helping to remove carbon from our energy ecosystem)
Sustainable materials (making computer chips safer)
Transportation (providing data for designing safer roads)
Government services (getting people the help they need when they need it)
I’ve been in the loop since very early on and it’s been amazing to see the various pitches evolve and deepen. If they attract attention from government, industry, and academia, they could have a really big impact on the country and our field(s).
You can learn more about the event at: https://ai.gov/aspirations/ , a website that came online late yesterday but hopefully will stay around awhile and include videos of the talks.
Oh, one other item, before I sit down to hear the presentations. I was disappointed that no one attempted the puzzle I designed for the previous update. Then I realized that I forgot to include it. (Oops.) Here it is, in case you have some post-graduation downtime:
The other day, I was texting with my good friend and superstar researcher/administrator/educator Charles Isbell. He had, once again, rhetorically outmaneuvered me and I acknowledged that sometimes it seems like he is playing three-dimensional chess while I play 1-dimensional tic tac toe. But then it occurred to me that 1-dimensional tic tac toe is moderately interesting, especially if played on an infinite board. Assuming that X goes first, determine whether infinite 1-dimensional tic tac toe is a win for X, a win for O, or a draw (meaning that both players have strategies that they can use to avoid losing, even over an infinitely long game).
I asked various chatbots to solve this problem and they provided “solutions” that sounded great, but I don’t think actually worked. I’m interested to hear what you come up with.
Until next time!
-Michael