I’ve assisted to the Artificial Intelligence for Development symposium, part AAAI 2010 Spring Symposium at Stanford March 22–24.  Artificial Intelligence for Development represents a growing  research interest on applying AI methodology as machine learning, data mining to development problems. The co-chair were Nathan Eagle from MIT / SFI and Eric Horvitz from Microsoft Research. Some representative examples from the sessions:

• Using ai in m-health for reducing expertise need, for instance automatic detection of diabetic reinopathy (Silberman et al) or heartsound diagnostics using a smartphone (Chena et al.).
• Data mining mobile use data from developing countries for gaining knowledge of their impact in society. Several interesting cases were presenting were they are using these detail records for research purposes.
• Using voice as data for helping farmers in rural India (Parikh, T) and using speech technology for information access (Barnard et al, Farrell et al)

During the last day I moderated one of the breakout sessions discussing the application of these methods for sustainable development and not limited to developing regions. This was great to discuss some of my interests as most of the session had not included a sustainability or environmental perspective.  The most interesting points of discussion from my point of view were:

• Using artificial intelligence for optimization (that’s one of the typical points of using ICT for sustainability) but also use ai  simulation methods for predicting and avoiding rebound effects of the optimization measures.
• Using ai for cradle to cradle implementation, both at the design process for creating products that make an optimal use of resources and that can be easily and completely recycled (ai 4 design, material sciences). And for accounting and verification that the resources loops are closed and efficient.

A very interesting symposium, very interesting attendees, and several points and inspiration to be taken for our research.

I’ve been at Berkeley today, and I’m now sitting at a Café, drinking a capuccino and working with my laptop, surrounded with students doing the same as it’s pouring outside. Nice atmosphere. I’ll make a short resume of the meetings:

I met first with Tapan Parikh from the School of Information, when we discussed around ICT and sustainable development and I got to know more about the work they are doing around ICT for Development. I also participated in the seminar about ICTD when a the plans about researching the impact of mobile phones in Rwanda in prices, wages and in mitigating economical shocks and crisis  was presented, interesting work going on there! I’m seriously thinking that we need to change focus to developing countries, or at least have some more work on it.

Then I met with Eric Hallstein (Energy and Resources Group), Graham Bullock, and Avery Cohn (Department of Environmental Science, Policies, and Management), that are working at the Infolab, researching the use of technologies to create and provide environmental and health information to the consumers, how that impacts their behavior and developing tools to do it in the best way. One of the projects that they were part of is Good Guide, which now  they are using as data source. We had a lot of research areas / questions in common, and it was giving to discuss with them around different ideas. It would be good to have more contact with them.

The picture is actually from the Muir Woods, I couldn’t take pictures of the nice campus here as it’s raining heavily, but they had a creek and some impresing redwoods too here.

Persuasive 2009 is now over, and it’s time for reflections.

The speakers and keynotes were really interesting, and there were three intense days getting in information.

One inspiring presentation was by B.J. Fogg where he suggested a eight step design process for persuasive applications.

The main message was to start small, to do not overdo interventions trying to do everything the first time.

Pick a simple behavior that you’re able to measure and create an application that try to change it, then if it success, grow (by repeating, replicating to another behavior, make the behavior harder, scale to more people…). Do fast iterations, a bit agile style, or getting real.

He also presented a quite simplified view of where to “attack” using persuasion: First try to trigger the behavior, if it doesn’t work look if the behavior needs to be simplified, and if not, go back to increasing the motivation.

Now I’m in San Francisco for some days, I’ll keep posting some more reflections about the conference these days.

I’m presenting a paper in the Persuasion 2009 conference at Claremont, the city of trees and PhDs.

I just have arrived today after a 20 hours trip and 1 ton extra carbon dioxide to my account. The city is very cozy and the hotel Casa 425 looks terrific.

The conference will start tomorrow and I will present on Tuesday. I will both update my twitter and blog during these days to keep you informed.

After the conference I will go to San Francisco (U.C. Berkeley) and Los Angeles (UCLA)

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