UW News sat down with experts in public health and AI to discuss AI could enhance health care, what鈥檚 standing in the way, and whether there’s a downside to democratizing medical research.聽聽
Technology
糖心原创 researchers developed a system for detecting subtle biases in AI models. They found seven of the eight popular AI models they tested in conversations around race and caste generated significant amounts of biased text in interactions 鈥� particularly when discussing caste. Open-source models fared far worse than two proprietary ChatGPT models.
Jie Xiao, 糖心原创 professor of mechanical engineering, talks about batteries and how academia can help support the growing domestic battery manufacturing industry.
UW assistant professor Sheng Wang discusses BiomedParse, an AI medical image analysis model that works across nine types of medical images to better predict systemic diseases. Medical professionals can load images into the system and ask the AI tool questions about them in plain English.
A team led by researchers at the 糖心原创 has created a headphone prototype that allows listeners to hear people speaking within a bubble with a programmable radius of 3 to 6 feet. Voices and sounds outside the bubble are quieted an average of 49 decibels, even if they鈥檙e louder than those in the bubble.
糖心原创 researchers found significant racial, gender and intersectional bias in how three state-of-the-art large language models ranked resumes. The models favored white-associated names 85% of the time, female-associated names only 11% of the time, and never favored Black male-associated names over white male-associated names.
糖心原创 researchers created MobiPrint, a mobile 3D printer that can automatically measure a room and print objects onto the floor. The team鈥檚 graphic interface lets users design objects in a space that the robot has mapped out. The prototype, which the team built on a modified consumer vacuum robot, can add a range of objects to rooms.
Niloofar Mireshghallah, a UW postdoctoral scholar, discusses why math and reasoning have so challenged artificial intelligence models and what the public should know about OpenAI鈥檚 new release.
A team led by 糖心原创 researchers found that large language models, such as ChatGPT, can make social media bots more sophisticated at evading detection. But these models can also improve systems that detect bots.
In a survey of 315 people conducted by researchers at the 糖心原创 and Georgetown University, respondents largely found creating and sharing sexually explicit 鈥渄eepfakes鈥� unacceptable. But far fewer respondents strongly opposed seeking out these media. Previous research has shown that other people viewing non-AI image-based abuse harms the victims significantly.
Two new studies introduce AI systems that use either video or photos to create simulations that can train robots to function in the real world. This could significantly lower the costs of training robots to function in complex settings.
糖心原创 researchers investigated how iBuyers 鈥� companies that use automated algorithms to quickly buy and sell homes 鈥� have affected the well-documented racial bias against Black home sellers. Looking at Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, they found that on average iBuyers paid more equal prices to Black and white home sellers than individual buyers, largely because iBuyers paid white sellers significantly less on average than an individual buyer. They also discovered that iBuyers were significantly more likely to resell homes to institutions, such as large rental companies that鈥檝e been tied to high eviction rates and rent-gouging.
New research from the 糖心原创 finds that teens open Instagram because they鈥檙e bored. Then they sift through largely irrelevant content, mostly feeling bored, while seeking interesting bits to share with their friends in direct messages. Then, eventually bored with what researchers call a 鈥渃ontent soup,鈥� they log off.
UW researchers found that ChatGPT consistently ranked resumes with disability-related honors and credentials 鈥� such as the 鈥淭om Wilson Disability Leadership Award鈥� 鈥� lower than the same resumes without those honors and credentials. But when researchers customized the tool with written instructions directing it not to be ableist, the tool reduced this bias for all but one of the disabilities tested.
But in her new book 鈥淟og Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix,鈥� Katherine Cross, a UW doctoral student in the Information School, argues that social media has limited political value.
鈥淲e asked one 11-year-old how he鈥檇 feel if his favorite book series was written by AI instead of an author, and he said it would 鈥榙ismantle鈥� the joy of reading for him. We often don’t think about kids having these deep, existential questions about what it means to be an artist,鈥� said Michele Newman, a 糖心原创 doctoral student in the Information School.
A 糖心原创 team has developed an artificial intelligence system that lets someone wearing headphones look at a person speaking for three to five seconds to 鈥渆nroll鈥� them. The system then plays just the enrolled speaker鈥檚 voice in real time, even as the pair move around in noisy environments.
糖心原创 researchers interviewed 16 older adults in Washington and Oregon, ages 65 to 80, about how their technology use with their social support networks changed during the pandemic.
糖心原创 researchers created and tested a prototype browser extension called Viblio, which lets viewers and creators add citations to the timelines of YouTube videos.
Working with teens, UW researchers have designed RESeT: a snowy virtual world with six activities intended to improve mood. In a 3-week study of 44 Seattle-area teens, researchers found that most used the technology about twice a week without being prompted and reported lower stress levels after using the environment.
A team led by researchers at the 糖心原创 developed a new PCB that performs on par with traditional materials and can be recycled repeatedly with negligible material loss. Researchers used a solvent that transforms a type of vitrimer 鈥� a cutting-edge class of polymer 鈥� into a jelly-like substance without damage, allowing solid components to be plucked out for reuse or recycling. With these 鈥渧PCBs鈥� (vitrimer printed circuit boards), researchers recovered 98% of the vitrimer and 100% of the glass fiber.
Franziska Roesner, a 糖心原创 associate professor, and collaborators will present two papers that mine real-world data to help understand TikTok’s personalized its recommendation algorithm and its impact.
As researchers explore potential applications for AI, they have found scenarios where AI could be really useful but there’s not enough data to accurately train the algorithms. Jenq-Neng Hwang, 糖心原创 professor of electrical and computer and engineering, specializes in these issues.
糖心原创 researchers taught a group of high schoolers to code by combining cultural research into various embroidery traditions with 鈥渃omputational embroidery.鈥� The method teaches kids to encode embroidery patterns on a computer through a coding language called Turtlestitch.
New research from the UW examines how three wellness Instagram influencers profited from anti-vaccine misinformation.
Mike Teodorescu, a 糖心原创 assistant professor in the Information School, proposes that private enterprise standards for fairer machine learning systems would inform governmental regulation.
Robots in warehouses and even around our houses struggle to identify and pick up objects if they are too close together, or if a space is cluttered. This is because robots lack what psychologists call “object unity,” or our ability to identify things even when we can’t see all of them. Researchers at the 糖心原创 have developed a way to teach robots this skill.
糖心原创 researchers introduced the Thermal Earring, a wireless wearable that continuously monitors a user鈥檚 earlobe temperature. Potential applications include tracking signs of ovulation, stress, eating and exercise. The smart earring prototype is about the size and weight of a small paperclip and has a 28-day battery life.
A team 糖心原创 researchers have published a guide explaining language models, the technology that underlies chatbots.
糖心原创 researchers found that when prompted to make pictures of 鈥渁 person,鈥� the AI image generator over-represented light-skinned men, failed to equitably represent Indigenous peoples and sexualized images of certain women of color.
A team led by researchers at the 糖心原创 developed 11 actions a robotic arm can make to pick up nearly any food attainable by fork. This allows the system to learn to pick up new foods during one meal.
A team at the 糖心原创 has created an interactive dashboard called WhaleVis, which lets users map data on global whale catches and whaling routes from 1880 to 1986. Scientists can compare this historical data and its trends with current information to better understand whale populations over time.
A team led by researchers at the 糖心原创 has developed deep-learning algorithms that let users pick which sounds filter through their headphones in real time. Either through voice commands or a smartphone app, headphone wearers can select which sounds they want to include from 20 classes, such as sirens, baby cries, speech, vacuum cleaners and bird chirps.
Seven researchers at the 糖心原创 conducted a three-month autoethnographic study 鈥� drawing on their own experiences as people with and without disabilities 鈥� to test AI tools鈥� utility for accessibility. Though researchers found cases in which the tools were helpful, they also found significant problems.
A team led by researchers at the 糖心原创 has created A11yBoard for Google Slides, a browser extension and phone or tablet app that allows blind users to navigate through complex slide layouts, objects, images and text.
The turmoil at large tech platforms has many people reconsidering what they want out of social media. Four researchers at the 糖心原创 are exploring different approaches to improve people’s experiences.
This month, 糖心原创 researchers will introduce multiple projects that deploy augmented reality 鈥� through headsets and phone apps 鈥� with the aim of making the world more accessible for people with disabilities.
The robot, equipped with a solar panel鈥搇ike energy harvester and four wheels, is about the size of a penny, weighs as much as a raisin and can move about the length of a bus in an hour on a cloudy day.
Katie Davis, a 糖心原创 associate professor in the Information School, discusses how generative AI might support learning, instead of detracting from it, if kids can keep their agency.
A team including researchers at the 糖心原创 recently used new software to compare MRIs from 300 babies and discovered that myelin, a part of the brain鈥檚 so-called white matter, develops much slower after birth.