蜜桃传媒

BUFFALO, N.Y. – It’s official.

The 蜜桃传媒 is creating an academic department dedicated to harnessing artificial intelligence for the public good.

The new Department of AI and Society (AIS), which recently received $5 million from New York State, will launch this fall. It will build upon UB’s longstanding leadership in AI and its role as New York’s flagship university.

“The vision of the new AIS department is to create AI systems that are built by society, for society,” says Atri Rudra, who will serve as the department’s inaugural chair. “Currently, AI systems are built with accuracy as the primary metric and then they are ’fine-tuned’ for societal considerations. The vision of the AIS department is to build AI systems where societal consideration is the main driver of the development of AI models and not an afterthought. “

The department will develop AI-focused degrees across an array of undergraduate programs and academic disciplines such as geography, health, public policy, communication, creativity and the arts, languages and more, says Rudra, the Katherine Johnson Chair in Artificial Intelligence and a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering

The department – to be based jointly in UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the College of Arts and Sciences – plans to offer undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Jeff Good, professor in the Department of Linguistics, will serve as the associate chair of the department.

“The partnership between AI experts and researchers in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and in the College of Arts and Sciences will enable transformational interdisciplinary research. This new department reflects a strong commitment to ensuring that AI technologies are used ethically and that their benefits are equitably distributed across society,” he said.

UB will use the state funds to purchase high-performance computing for use by UB researchers and students, and to hire additional faculty with expertise in AI and its interaction with society. The new hires will add to UB’s more than 200 professors researching AI.

The department will complement existing academic departments and units, including UB’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, and Empire AI, the $400 million statewide consortium whose supercomputing center is located at UB.

UB is also planning an AI & Society Building, a new facility that will feature computer labs, offices, conference rooms and incubator space for startups.