Twelve students and two UW staff members attended a ten-day worldwide artificial intelligence (AI) conference in Washington, D.C.
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence hosted the event with receipts of their scholarship invited to attend.
“The event was definitely worth the time and effort it took to attend. Although most of the research was super domain-specific, making it difficult for students and even experienced AI researchers to grasp the full depth of it, overall, I still learned so much about how AI research develops in the real world,” said Joshua Arulsmay, a senior studying computer science.
“I learned so much about new AI methods, such as analyzing existing AI models for trustworthiness, interpretability, and transparency, usage of AI for behavior change, misinformation campaigns, social research, and more.”
Lona van der Linden is a fellow computer science senior who attended the event, echoed similar thoughts.
“I certainly have no regrets about attending this conference. I’m an undergraduate research assistant at the Meta-Algorithmics, Learning, and Large-scale Empirical Testing (MALLET) lab on campus conducting research in machine learning algorithms, so I already had an interest in AI and Machine Learning going into this conference,” Linden said.
“That being said, attending AAAI was a great way to hone in my research interests and learn more about advanced topics within AI and ML.”
Other participants, like senior Natalie Foss, did not go into the conference with a particular interest. Instead, Foss used the time to learn more about AI as a whole.
“I learned a lot,” Foss said, “The topics would be something very broad that everyone can appreciate. And sometimes, it would be about important people in the industry and their career path.”
The ten-day event went from 8:00 am to 9:00 pm, with each day filled with different tutorials, lectures, talks, and posters. The events were optional, and each UW student took away different pieces of information.
“Overall, my big takeaways were that the AI field is evolving at a super fast rate and that attending conferences like this one helps you keep up with all the new tech. Many papers are describing super-advanced new techniques and methods in the field, and it is very exciting to see the research unfold,” Arulsamy said.
Linden, on the other hand, found the event to be motivating and encouraging.
“My main takeaway from this event was a desire to continue doing research in machine learning,” Linden said.
“I hope the university continues to promote and fund opportunities like these, especially for students in Computer Science. The ability to connect with a diverse and global learning community, bond with your peers, and learn about cutting-edge research is absolutely priceless and something I believe every student should have the opportunity to do.”
