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Invitation to join an NSF-sponsored research coordination network

We are writing to invite you to join our US National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project on Work in the Age of Intelligent Machines (NSF 17-45463). The project addresses the interaction between work and technology design in the age of intelligent machines. By intelligent machines, we mean autonomous machines, such as robots and vehicles, as well as the embedding of algorithms and machine learning processes to support autonomous behavior by intelligent systems of all kinds. We are reaching out to you because of your demonstrated interest in and contributions to this topic.

The relation between work and intelligent machines is attracting increasing interest (e.g., the recent Computing Research Association sponsored Summit on Technology and Jobs). Our project seeks to build on this interest by providing fora for diverse groups of researchers to interact and collaborate. The specific goal of the project is to build a research coordination network (RCN) to bring together investigators from computer science, engineering, the social and behavioral sciences and beyond, to communicate, coordinate and integrate their research and educational activities across disciplinary and organizational boundaries.

More ambitiously, our charge from NSF is to facilitate research convergence, meaning integration of knowledge, techniques, and expertise from multiple fields to form new and expanded frameworks. Because of the need to simultaneously consider technical, individual, group, organizational, and societal issues, only convergent research can build the deep and systematic knowledge required to engage the complex questions that need to be addressed to design work that best leverages expanding technological capabilities of intelligent machines, and to design technologies that best serve work and workers.

To achieve the aim of growing a network and incubating novel and necessary convergent research, the network will support three diverse activities over its five-year term.

First, the network organizes an annual Convergence Conference to highlight the contribution of convergent research on a pressing topic regarding the socio-technological landscape of work in the age of increased automation. The first conference was on the topic of Autonomous Vehicles in Society, held at Michigan State University in East Lansing MI, 18-19 May 2018 (see for more details). The goal is to produce a white paper describing a research agenda for this topic. To promote conversation, the agenda included time for small group discussions and a poster session.

Second, the network supports workshops at varied disciplinary conferences to expand the reach of the network and to consolidate, test, verify and evolve research ideas as they develop. The first workshop was held in conjunction with the ACM Group conference on 7 January 2018 (see for more details); the second was held with the Human Computation Conference. Two more workshops are planned for the coming year, so stay tuned for further announcements, and let us know if you know a conference that should host a workshop.

Finally, the network maintains a set of shared online resources to support the community and its research efforts. The website is our first step in this direction. We also have a low-traffic listserv (see for instructions on joining) and a Twitter feed ().

Joining the network as a participant means simply that you are interested in the topic, want to hear about our events (workshops and conferences) and might want to connect with like-minded researchers (you can see the current list of participants on the website). You can join by joining the listserv and signing up for an account on the website ().

We hope though that in time you will become an active participant, e.g., by attending the conferences or workshops or by contributing resources to the website (e.g., adding to our list of related publications). Or perhaps you’ll even become a network leader, organizing a workshop at a conference in your area or contributing to an annual conference. The NSF funding can help support the final two activities.

The strength of the RCN lies solely in its participants, so we hope you will join us today. Your participation and your comments will be warmly welcomed.