Christine Thropp
The National Science Foundation has awarded grants to nine universities to fund 11 research projects under the Program on Fairness in Artificial Intelligence, which was launched in partnership with Amazon to help ensure AI systems are accountable, beneficial to all, fair, inclusive and transparent.
The agency said Wednesday the initiative supports computational research and is focused on theoretical and algorithmic foundations of the technology; principles for human interaction with AI systems; natural language understanding, computer vision and other AI-based technologies; and AI applications in hiring decisions, education, criminal justice, human services and other areas.
One research seeks to quantify and mitigate disparities in language technologies while another aims to ensure fair use of patient attributes through the use of theoretical tools.
The 2021 FAI program awardees are:
- University of California-Santa Cruz
- New York University
- Harvard University
- Carnegie-Mellon University
- American University
- University of Chicago
- University of Pittsburgh
- University of California-San Diego
- University of Virginia Main Campus
The grants range from $375,000 to $625,000, with varying performance period.
“As AI technologies become more prevalent in our daily lives, AI fairness is an increasingly important area of scientific endeavor," said Prem Natarajan, vice president in Amazon’s Alexa unit.
