Archimedes Initiative Workshop 2024

The theme of this third annual workshop is Trusted AI and Autonomy. AI is changing how people work, communicate, learn and organize. As transformative AI becomes increasingly embedded in complex systems, engineers, policy makers and researchers must determine how to govern and evaluate this emerging technology while balancing its potential to transform society for good against the risks and harms that arise from novel use cases. There is a need to connect choices about data and design to strategies for the governance of AI systems and the data on which they are trained and deployed.

This workshop brings together researchers and practitioners from different disciplines and application areas to discuss fundamental concepts of trust in AI and autonomy, and methods to ensure this trust in deployed systems. Specific topics of interest include:

• Human aspects of trust and explainability
• Systems Engineering for AI and autonomy
• Management of trust/risk measures
• Evaluation and certification of autonomous systems
• Testbeds to evaluate socio-technical aspects of trust

Keynote Speakers

• Government Keynote: Martin Stanley, Emerging Technology Branch Chief at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
• Industry Keynote: Ron Keesing, Senior Vice President for Technology Integration, Leidos

Archimedes Partner Presentations

1. Axel Hahn, DLR, Trustworthy Vehicles: Let’s Learn from Live
2. Freek Bomhof, TNO-ESI, Trustworthy AI as a Requirement in Applied Research Prototypes
3. Martin Törngren, TECoSA, Trustworthy AI Based Cyber-Physical Systems – the Good, the Bad and the Real Challenge
4. Zoe Szajnfarber, SERC, Opportunities for Systems Engineering in the Trustworthy AI

This workshop is a unique opportunity to further explore the Trusted AI and Autonomy themes of workshop day 1 while learning to apply systems thinking methods and tools. The workshop will be organized around a 2-day “Applied Systems Thinking” professional development course that has been taught to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the past 10 years. The theme of this workshop will be “Trustworthy Automation of Urban Transportation Systems” The outcome of the workshop will be a strategic plan for Trusted AI and Autonomy research in the near- and long-term by jointly defining the critical research activities necessary to accelerate the deployment of fully automated and trusted urban transportation systems. The first day will focus on defining the problems to be solved by this research, and the second day will model the envisioned systems and the research strategy to achieve fully automated and trusted urban transportation.

Systems Thinking is a holistic problem solving methodology focused on broadly considering whole system structures, patterns, and cycles rather than individual parts. Systems Thinking relies on our Critical Thinking: our personal ability to think more clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. These come together in support of Complex Problem Solving: using a collection of processes and activities related to the cognitive and motivational aspects of ourselves, applied to dynamic situations in complex systems, to achieve ill-defined near- and long-term goals. Complex Problem Solving is a process flow that helps us understand complex situations and then design potential solutions. We seldom are given the time and resources to think our way through a complex problem like urban transportation as a whole, or to collaborate on means to improve these problems holistically. This workshop offers us two days to think through these problems and potential solution pathways, while contributing to the advancement of a collaborative research agenda for the Archimedes partners.

Open only to Archimedes leadership.