The call for papers for the Fourth Black In AI conference is out! Submissions are due on October 2.
If you’re not familiar with the Black In AI conference, its primary goal is to promote and sustain the development of Black and African researchers in the data science, machine learning, and AI communities. From the website:
Black in AI is a place for sharing ideas, fostering collaborations and discussing initiatives to increase the presence of Black people in the field of Artificial Intelligence.
Some important context: the field of AI is grappling with pervasive Anti-Blackness, and efforts like Black In AI are needed now more than ever.
Now that I’ve given some background, here’s a an excerpt from the call for papers
We invite submissions for the Fourth Black in AI Workshop (co-located with NeurIPS). Both the Black in AI workshop and the NeurIPS conference will be held in a virtual (online) format.
We welcome research papers, position papers, survey papers, vision papers, or, papers that inform about neglected/abandoned areas of study where AI could be impactful. Papers may introduce new theory, methodology, applications or product demonstrations. Papers are published in a non-archival format and may have been published in other venues before or be published in other venues in the future. We welcome research papers on the following topics: Artificial Intelligence, Computational Neuroscience, Deep Learning, Knowledge Reasoning, Machine Learning, Multi-agent Systems, Statistical Reasoning, Computational Theory, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Data Mining and, Robotics. We also welcome papers about applications of AI to Health, Education, Fairness, Ethics and, Transparency in AI, AI & Arts, AI & Politics, etc.
We encourage all Black and/or African researchers in areas related to AI to submit their work. The work should include at least one Black and/or African researcher either as main author or co-author.
The planning committee is particularly interested in encouraging participation from important communities — researchers at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the many activists that have been confronting the use of facial recognition in policing, the many citizen data scientists who’ve been tracking racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths, the Afrofuturist philosophers theorizing a new world — whose voices are so important in developing the kinds of technologies that are relevant to the lives of the people of the African diaspora.
You can stay up to date on twitter (@blackinai) or facebook, and you always just join Black In AI and subscribe to the mailing list.
Charles write here 
What a cool and intensely important conference, Charles.
Reminds me a bit of the graduate school Philosophy class I was invited to 2nd semester of my freshman year: PHIL5364 The Image and Reality of Man and Machine in Modern Literature. Turin and the machine model and AI were coupled with Epistemological Cognition, the Semiotic, Divination, and simply what the standard was (if any established) for what constituted sentience. Don’t ask me how I remember the Class number PHIL 5364 after 33 years. Maybe, it was I was so honored and proud to be invited to a graduate Philosophy class as a freshman triple major ionArchitecture, Philosophy, and Psychology working to craft a minor in the Psychosynthesis of the individuation process as corporeally related to R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz’s work on the Temple of Luxor at Karnak expressed in his “Temple in Man” Smaller book and “Temple of Man” 2-volume set. I started laughing remembering this as I now get the probs my Advisor had with me when she said, “Jordan, you can’t Minor in a PhD level topic.” I laugh that I didn’t see both the humor and the stubbornness of me back then that, “Well, things need to change, because I want a Minot in that. It’s only 20 hours of credit. Can’t you Clear the way and make that happen?”
I go through the above as an example of how pig-headed people (me) can be, and that I can only attempt to imagine the travails and no-avails the black community os met with in what is NOT a WonderBread topic. IAI takes a village. Literally, a Village of Code.
Looking back, I shake my head. What a glaring and (now) offensive omission. There wasn’t a black face in the class of 12 people or even in the literature. Two Eastern Indians from the Graduate Math Department. That pounds me into that we were exploring AI, ourselves with an artificial (facsimile) intelligence in that the spectrum of researchers was not adequately represented from cultural and demographic and race perspectives. That in itself gives me a case of the “hmmmmms,” as I am surprised at my blind spot, even then when I was younger. I‘m surprised that I didn’t notice it back then because, regardless of youth, I was already writing Community Form & Identity Policy as it was of special interest to me in my Urban Studies in the College of Architecture — Architecture, Philosophy, Psychology core. And, then even more surprising from the Architecture and Psychology perspectives, as I used to incessantly parrot that we all live in homes (sans homeless) and we all have noggins that are all equally valuable at the onset.
Wow. I’m not currently in a position such my knowledge base Of the AI State of the Union is current in such a way as to be able to work with a collaborator to draft a submission for this, though I will certainly make mention of this in your entry on my weekly Serendipity Itineraries post that will go out on Friday — see if anyone knows someone who may benefit from the outlet for their work.
Thanks Charles. Much appreciated. Good stuff in your post for the Black in AI 2020 Call for Papers, and as well for the wonderful, personal, revisionist history Jolt I just experienced as I became aware of Omitted Null Lines in my initial experience back then (1987)… in subject and reference and authorship and general focus group of authors read and research and experience… all of them. What a tragedy I see there back then. Well, OFL, Opportunity For Learning. I’ll certainly get the Black in AI 2020 Call for Papers in my Friday SI post.