Category Archives: News

SPECIAL ISSUE: AI Magazine: NSF’s National AI Institutes

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On March 19, 2024, AAAI published the Special Issue if AI Magazine in National AI Institutes. The publication includes an Introduction by DILab’s Ashok Goel and AI-ALOE’s Chaohua Ou which describes the scheme for the organization of the 20 articles in the issue.

Within the Special Issue is also “AI-ALOE: AI for reskilling, upskilling, and workforce development” by Ashok Goel, Chris Dede, and Chaohua Ou. The article highlights how AI-ALOE is developing models and techniques to make AI assistants usable, learnable, teachable, and scalable.

AAAI Special Issue
AI assistants usable, learnable, teachable, and scalable

New Publication: Explanation as Question Answering Based on User Guides

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Congratulations to Vrinda Nandan, Spencer Rugaber, and Ashok Goel for the publication of their chapter, “Explanation as Question Answering based on User Guides”, in Explainable Agency in Artificial Intelligence: Research and Practice.

This book focuses on a subtopic of explainable AI (XAI) called explainable agency (EA), which involves producing records of decisions made during an agent’s reasoning, summarizing its behavior in human-accessible terms, and providing answers to questions about specific choices and the reasons for them. We distinguish explainable agency from interpretable machine learning (IML), another branch of XAI that focuses on providing insight (typically, for an ML expert) concerning a learned model and its decisions. In contrast, explainable agency typically involves a broader set of AI-enabled techniques, systems, and stakeholders (e.g., end users), where the explanations provided by EA agents are best evaluated in the context of human subject studies.

The chapters of this book explore the concept of endowing intelligent agents with explainable agency, which is crucial for agents to be trusted by humans in critical domains such as finance, self-driving vehicles, and military operations. This book presents the work of researchers from a variety of perspectives and describes challenges, recent research results, lessons learned from applications, and recommendations for future research directions in EA. The historical perspectives of explainable agency and the importance of interactivity in explainable systems are also discussed. Ultimately, this book aims to contribute to the successful partnership between humans and AI systems.

Read the Chapter
Get the Book!

Chelsea Wang: Theory of Mind on Human-AI Interaction

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Congratulations to Qiaosi “Chelsea” Wang for acceptance of her proposal to the ACM CHI conference for a CHI 2024 Workshop on Theory of Mind on Human-AI Interaction!

The CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction. The conference embraces the theme of Surfing the World – reflecting the focus on pushing forth the wave of cutting-edge technology and riding the tide of new developments in human-computer interaction. The conference serves as a platform for researchers, practitioners, and industry leaders to share their latest work and ideas and to foster collaboration and innovation in the field

The Frontier of Artificial Intelligence

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On November 13, 2023 the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) published the latest episode of the NSF’s Discovery Files Podcast.

Joining the podcast are Aarti Singh from the AI Institute for Societal Decision Making; Amy McGovern from the AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography; Ashok Goel from the National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education; Vikram Adve from the Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability Institute; and Michael Littman, division director for Information and Intelligent Systems in NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, to hear how these institutes will revolutionize the frontiers of AI and how society will benefit from these innovations

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Chelsea Wang: June 8th Symposium on Mental Model in Human-AI Interaction

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Our very own Qiaosi Wang (Chelsea) and Dr. Ashok Goel are hosting a symposium on Mental Model in Human-AI Interaction on June 8th, 2023. Check out the details below:

Symposium on Mental Model in Human-AI Interaction

As we interact with increasingly advanced AI systems, different mental models are constructed and adapted to facilitate, drive, and support the success of human-AI interactions.

What kinds of mental models are there? How do we leverage them in human-AI interaction? What are some sociotechnical considerations of mental models? Join us on June 8th for an online symposium on “Mental Model in Human-AI Interaction” to explore these questions with us. 

Date: Thursday, June 8th, 2023

Time: 3pm to 6pm Eastern Time

Location: Zoom (Register here to receive the zoom meeting link: https://gatech.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMocOmrqj0uGdRgxezgtqaWESXdLWa–9Mx)

Contact: Chelsea (qswang@gatech.edu)

Ashok Goel: CogSci 2022

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On July 29, Ashok Goel gave a presentation at The CogSci 2022 Cognitive Diversity Conference 2022.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dMG0B71HbJLCblqLA6E9Ys2gBQgMlckb/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101146215278313978371&rtpof=true&sd=true.

Faces of Research: Meet Ashok Goel

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https://research.gatech.edu/faces-research-meet-ashok-goel

The Institute for Data Engineering and Science, or IDEaS, is one of Georgia Tech’s 10 interdisciplinary research institutes. IDEaS provides the coordination and expertise necessary to link researchers across campus by strengthening Georgia Tech’s position in big data.

This installment of the Faces of Research Q&A series is with Ashok Goel.

What is your field of expertise and why did you choose it?
I conduct research into cognitive systems at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive science. In one direction, we build theories and techniques of AI that are inspired by human cognition and behavior. On the other, we build AI models and tools that aid and augment human thinking and learning. I love it! 

What makes GaTech research institutes unique?
The Georgia Tech AI Research Institutes are special in the multi-institutional and interdisciplinary research communities they foster to address grand societal challenges. The AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education (AI-ALOE) led by Georgia Research Alliance and headquartered at Georgia Tech, for example, brings together AI researchers, computer scientists, cognitive scientists, and learning scientists from academia, industry, and non-profit organizations to address the societal challenges of lifelong learning and workforce development. Our society is facing the huge challenge of reskilling and upskilling a hundred million workers (and a billion around the world) within the next decade. Addressing such huge challenges requires extraordinary and bold efforts exemplified by the AI Research Institutes.  

What impact is your research having on the world?
Our Design Intelligence Laboratory and Center for 21st Century Universities already are having a significant impact on higher education. The virtual teaching assistant, named Jill Watson, for automatically answering questions in online classes enhances teacher presence and learner engagement is one example of our impact. The free and publicly available Virtual Experimentation Research Assistant that is now globally accessible through Smithsonian Institution’s Encyclopedia of Life web portal is another example. We expect that over time the newly established AI-ALOE Institute will amplify the impact of our work by an order of magnitude or more. This is very exciting. 

What do you like to do in your spare time when you are not working on your research or teaching?
I like to cook Indian food and read about world politics, history, and philosophy. I also like to travel and explore the world.