AIDBEI2024: Diversity Affinity Group Event on Artificial Intelligence - Diversity, Belonging, Equity, and Inclusion Hybrid May 7, 2024 |
Conference website | https://kdd.cs.ksu.edu/Workshops/AAMAS-AIDBEI-2024/ |
Abstract registration deadline | April 28, 2024 |
Submission deadline | April 28, 2024 |
2nd DiverseInAI.org Affinity Group Event on Artificial Intelligence - Diversity, Belonging, Equity, and Inclusion (AIDBEI)
AAMAS 2024 Affinity Group Event
Description of Affinity Group Event
This affinity group event is the second in the series of events organized by Diverse In AI, an affinity group which aims to foster links between participants from underrepresented populations, which in artificial intelligence includes but is not limited to women, BIPOC persons, LGBTQ+ persons, persons with disabilities (e.g., Black in AI, WiML, LatinX in AI, Queer in AI, Indigenous in AI, Disability in AI). Meanwhile, many service and outreach affinity group event such as the Grace Hopper Conference (GHC) provide opportunities to technologists to understand the needs of underserved populations and in turn give back to these communities. The organizers of this affinity group event wish to bring together these communities to strive to achieve the intersecting goals through interdisciplinary collaborations. This shall help in the dissemination of benefits to all underserved communities in the field of AI and further help in mentoring students/future technologists belonging to isolated, underprivileged, and underrepresented communities.
Call for Papers
The purpose of the affinity group event is to increase the diversity, belonging, equity, and inclusiveness (DBEI) of AAAI by providing peer review, mentoring, critical feedback, and shepherding of papers relevant to the main conference. To support this mission, DiverseInAI.org welcomes papers in two modalities: technical papers and topics of specific relevance to the specialized topic of the workshop (“AI for good in DBEI”).
Technical Papers
In keeping with the organizers’ affiliations with its affinity group partners, technical areas emphasized will include machine learning with emphasis on natural language processing (NLP), computer vision (CV), and reinforcement learning (RL).
Topics of Specific Relevance to AIDBEI
- Demographic studies regarding AI applications and/or students underserved populations
- Reports of mentoring practice for AI students from underserved populations
- Data science and analytics on surveys, assessments, demographics, and all other data regarding diversity and inclusion in AI
- Survey work on potential underserved populations, especially undergraduate students from such populations
- Fielded systems incorporating AI and experimental results from underserved communities
- Emerging technology and methodology for AI in underserved communities
- Documentation of risks and harms, and ethical impacts of AI with respect to marginalized peoples
Affinity Group Events Logistics
The Affinity Group Event will be a half-day event featuring morning and afternoon sessions. In the spirit of fostering new collaborations and meaningful exchange of ideas, care will be taken to allocate sufficient time for discussions and questions. Since, the affinity group event will be a virtual event, time-allocation for talks, panel discussion, poster session, and Q&A sessions will be done to accommodate maximum participation. The program committee will aim at accepting papers for long papers (5-8 pages), short papers (2-4 page abstracts) and contributed talks. The contributions should focus on best practices, challenges and opportunities for mentoring from underserved populations, education research pertinent to AI, AI for Good as applicable to underserved students’ communities.
The affinity group event will begin with brief welcoming remarks, followed by a 3 to 4-hour session of invited talks, contributed talks, and half the oral presentations. The second session will include the second half of papers, followed by an optional poster session. This session will also include a panel discussion on a topic of current interest, which has been at every annual AAMAS affinity group event since its inception in 2000. The session will conclude with an online social event open to everyone, using the gather town software for one-to-one and many-to-many interaction and networking through multiple communities. A mentoring sub-event will be offered to junior attendees during the online social event in order to encourage interactions.
Target Audience
The target audience consists of artificial intelligence educators, practitioners, and students (both graduate and undergraduate) who have an interest in the application of AI to serve underserved populations in the field of AI. Intersectionality of students who themselves belong to groups that are presently underrepresented in AI research, and possess a cultural heritage or ethnic origin that is related to such underserved populations, is recognized and emphasized.
Expected Participation
Participation of 20 - 50 AAMAS attendees is expected.
Call for Participation
An open call for presentations, demos, and challenge talks will be posted as for a technical workshop, additional outreach to invited speakers and participants.
Expected Timeline
CFP: Tuesday 2 April 2024; 2-page presentation proposals due: Sunday 28 April 2024; decision: Monday 29 April 2024; talk abstracts, short papers, slides due: Friday 3rd April 2024.
Funding Needed / Potential Sources of Funding
No funding is needed for the event itself.
Relevant Past Workshops
Recent Events Related to Proposed Topic (current and last two years, reverse chronological order)
- AAAI 2024 : 7th AIDBEI workshop, 11 Feb 2023 - https://kdd.cs.ksu.edu/Workshops/AAAI-AIDBEI-2024/
- AAAI 2023 : 6th AIDBEI workshop, 11 Feb 2023 - https://kdd.cs.ksu.edu/Workshops/AAAI-2023/
- IJCAI 2022: 5th AIDBEI workshop, 23 JUly, 2022 - https://kdd.cs.ksu.edu/Workshops/IJCAI-AIDBEI-2022/
- AAMAS 2022: 4th AIDBEI workshop, 09 May 2022 – https://kdd.cs.ksu.edu/Workshops/AAMAS-AIDBEI-2022/
- AAAI 2022: 3rd AIDBEI workshop, 01 Mar 2022 – https://kdd.cs.ksu.edu/Workshops/AAAI-2022/
- AAAI 2021: 2nd AIDBEI workshop, 09 Feb 2021 – https://kdd.cs.ksu.edu/Workshops/AAAI-2021/
- AAAI 2020: Artificial Intelligence - Diversity, Belonging, Equity, and Inclusion (AIDBEI): Mentoring Students from Underserved Populations, 07 Feb 2020 – https://kdd.cs.ksu.edu/Workshops/AAAI-2020/
Organizing Committee (Tentative)
- Yihong Theis, Doctoral Candidate, Computer Science, Kansas State University
Phone (mobile): +1 785 317 1631; E-mail: yihong@ksu.edu
- Dr. William Hsu, Professor, Computer Science, Kansas State University,
Phone (work/mobile): +1 785 236 8247; E-mail: bhsu@ksu.edu
- Jessica Elmore, Associate director of diversity programs, Kansas State University
- Laura Montoya, President of Latinx in AI
- Lourdes Ramírez Cerna, Lecturer, Universidad Nacional de Trujillo
- Avijit Ghosh, Research Data Scientist, AdeptID
- Michael Running Wolf, PHD Student, McGill University, Founder, Indigenous in AI
- Laverne Bitsie-Baldwin, Director of Multicultural Engineering Program, Kansas State University
- Savannah Thais, Research Scientist, Columbia University in the City of New York
- Timnit Gebru, Founder & Executive Director, The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)
- Sanmi Koyejo - Assistant Professor, Stanford University
- Arjun Subramonian, Machine Learning Researcher, UCLA-NLP
- Ushnish Sengupta, Senior Artificial Intelligence Researcher, MediaTek Research
- William Agnew, Postdoctoral Researcher, Computer Science, University of Washington
- Kalika Bali, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research India
- Deb Raji, Fellow, Mozilla
- Margaret Mitchell, Researcher and Chief Ethics Scientist, Hugging Face
- Joy Buolamwini, Artist-in-Chief and President, The Algorithmic Justice League
Program Committee (Tentative)
- Dr. Jessica Elmore, Associate director of diversity programs, Kansas State University
- Laverne Bitsie-Baldwin, Director of Multicultural Engineering Program, Kansas State University
- Lourdes Ramírez Cerna, Lecturer, Universidad Nacional de Trujillo
- Yihong Theis, Doctoral Student, Computer Science, Kansas State University
- Dr. Matias Valdenegro, Researcher, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
- Arjun Subramonian, Machine Learning Researcher, UCLA-NLP
- Ushnish Sengupta, Senior Artificial Intelligence Researcher, MediaTek Research
- Hetvi Jethwani, Queer in AI
- Michael Running Wolf from Indigenous in AI
- Louvere Walker-Hannon, Black in AI
- Anoush Najarian, Software Engineering Manager, MATLAB Performance Team, MathWorks
- Kalika Bali, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research India