By Francesca Rossi, AAAI President
Break the silos, make humanity progress the priority!
While the winners of the 2022 ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award, Bernhard Schölkopf and Stuart J. Russell, were announced several months ago (see https://awards.acm.org/newell), it was last Saturday, June 10th, 2023, that they were celebrated in person during the 2023 ACM awards ceremony, that took place in San Francisco at the The Palace hotel.
Together with the ACM President, Yannis Ioannidis, I presented the award and had the opportunity to say very few words about my interpretation of the role of award, especially in the current AI research and deployment scenario. I am sharing my words here, hoping they can resonate with some of you and can help support the most beneficial AI research trajectories.
Bernhard Schölkopf, Francesca Rossi, and Stuart J. Russell at the 2023 ACM awards ceremony
As the president of AAAI, I am really proud for this long-standing collaboration between AAAI and ACM on the Allen Newell award. This award honors researchers who have worked outside the silos and have bridged AI and computer science to other disciplines.
AI used to be a scientific and technological field. But now, given its pervasiveness in our life, it has become a socio-science-technical field, where making sure that AI has a positive impact on people and society is as important as advancing its capabilities. And the two goals are tightly connected to each other, which makes multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder work crucial and necessary.
So this award, that focuses on outstanding multi-disciplinary contributions, is really very important and timely, not just for scientific and technological progress, but most importantly for the progress of humanity.
Congratulations again to the 2022 winners, who incarnate perfectly the spirit of this award!