Convergence Workshop at Group 2018

See a summary of this workshop here.

This all-day workshop aims to bring together researchers from diverse disciplines who share an interest in the future of work, particularly how humans and intelligent machines will collaborate together. We define intelligent machines as both material (e.g., robots) and immaterial (e.g., algorithms) computing technologies that can be characterized by autonomy, the ability to learn, and the ability to interact with other systems and with humans.

The workshop has three goals centered on the theme of convergence: "the deep integration of knowledge, techniques, and expertise from multiple fields to form new and expanded frameworks."

1) Identify specific, interdisciplinary research problems around work and intelligent machines

2) Develop a common language base that can facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration

3) Identify information and cyber-infrastructure needs to support the resulting research collaborations

A key distinguishing feature of convergence research is that it is centered around a challenging real-world problem. Therefore, an initial goal of the workshop is to discuss and come to some consensus about specific important and challenging transdisciplinary research problems. Second, we want to start to develop an integrated language base about the problems, phenomena, and issues surrounding work and intelligent machines, which can act as a boundary object to connect researchers and research done in disparate disciplines. Third, we want to define and use cases for technology, shared data and resources and cyber-infrastructure that support convergence research within the GROUP community and beyond.

Call for Participation
Participation is open to anyone interested in the topic, with a limit of 25 people. To be considered, please provide us with a 1000-word essay in response to the following prompts:

1) Articulate what you consider to be a challenging problem related to work at the human-technology frontier

2) Provide an empirical example (or two) of this problem

3) Imagine how we might design a research project (or two) to address this problem

We will use this material as a basis for group activities throughout the day.

Email your position papers to group18@waim.network by November 17, 2017. Notifications will be determined by December 1, 2017.