Conference: Inaugural Workshop on Provably Safe and Beneficial AI (PSBAI)

Award ID: 2230996

This workshop proposal aims to bring together a wide range of researchers on a very relevant and ambitious topic. It will start a timely discussion on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be made safe for public good, and how current advances in the field can become a supporting backbone for that usage. The proposal addresses a topic that has a lot of potential for research but has been very sparsely visited so far in both engineering and computing research communities. Overall, this is a strong workshop proposal which will lead to novel research conversations on two major topics of importance for todays society AI and digital ecosystem. The workshop is to be conducted over 2 days at the University of California Berkeley campus, both in-person and via videoconference, with 50 attendees, including stakeholders across industry, non-profits, academia, government and supra-national institutions, building on years of collaboration and consultation with the EU Commission, World Economic Forum, OECD, UNESCO, and GPAI; and with major foundations including Schmidt Futures, Kavli, Open Philanthropy; and several national governments. The PI has done a good job in putting together an impressive agenda, featuring academia, industry, and government organizations. The proposed workshop has five suggested topic areas including: 1) fundamental topics for safe and beneficial AI systems; 2) Considerations for provably safe and beneficial algorithmic media; 3) Considerations for provably safe and beneficial human-robot interaction; 4) Relevant technical considerations to enable a regulatory framework governing the deployment of powerful AI systems within a secure digital ecosystem; and 5) Considerations regarding fair access. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Jemin George