Track Editors

Ulises Cortés
Virginia Dignum
Marija Slavkovik
Toby Walsh

Previous Track Editors and Associate Editors

Vincent Conitzer (Track Editor)
Milind Tambe (Track Editor)
Erik Brynjolfsson (AI and Economics)
Gary Marcus (AI and Psychology)
Stuart Russell (Long Term Societal Impact of AI)
Manuela Veloso (AI and Autonomy)
Nick Bostrom (AI and Philosophy)
Rebecca Crootof (AI and Law)

Overview

The Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) is pleased to announce the launch of the JAIR Special Track on AI & Society. AI is rarely out of the news. There's a strong appetite within society to understand the impact that technology in general, and AI in particular will have in both the short and long term. The goal of the AI & Society track is to provide scholarly input to the debate around the impact AI will have on society, as well as to provide a forum in which research in AI focused on social good can be presented. All aspects of the impact of AI on society will be covered including but not limited to ethics, philosophy, economics, sociology, psychology, law, history, and politics.

Call for Submissions

4 types of articles will be published:

• regular journal articles
• viewpoints (short articles of up to 2000 words, dedicated to technical views and opinions on the impact AI will have on society in which positions are substantiated by facts or principled arguments)
• point/counterpoints (two viewpoints, taking opposite sides of an argument)
• multi-author discussion articles (e.g. half a dozen authors discuss arguments around an issue concerning the impact of AI on society)

Journal articles should present novel research. Novelty can be in the AI techniques themselves. However, it can also be in the application of existing AI techniques to a novel domain with a societal benefit. There is no necessity for the AI methods to extend the state of the art if the application itself is particularly novel. Novelty could also be in careful experimental comparison, e.g., of different AI techniques, in such applications.

It is expected that many point/counterpoint and multi-author discussion articles will be commissioned. However, they will still be peer reviewed, like all the other pieces published in the track. Controversial issues will not be avoided but should be dealt with fairly. Viewpoints and point/counterpoint articles may be more opinion based but should nevertheless be substantiated by facts or principled arguments. Viewpoints and point/counterpoint articles do not need to contain primary research data, although they may present 'sociological' data (funding trends, demographics, bibliographic data, etc.). The best such articles will be provocative, justifying a new concept or point of view.

Contents

Contents of the special track will be made available as articles are accepted.