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Year of AI

‘To do things they hadn't even thought of’: Senior Turing Scholar publishes second computer science research paper

Turing student Alan Baade pictured in gray and white against geometic print on white background and orange soundwaves running behind Alan's head.

10/01/2024 - Computer Science and Mathematics senior Alan Baade really enjoys spending hours on problems.Especially the particularly hard ones, he said. Spending 40 hours on one equation with a small break for sleep somewhere in the middle is rewarding to him.“I think it's because you can tell at the end of this you are going to understand the material,” Baade said.  “You're going to understand computers.”

Turbocharging Protein Engineering with AI

Three people stand silhouetted  in front of a wall-sized video display that shows several large colorful illustrations of molecules

09/26/2024 - Biotech advances from UT’s new Deep Proteins group are changing the game with help from artificial intelligence.Working as a chemist in Houston, Danny Diaz spent a lot of time plodding his way through crosstown traffic, pondering how to speed up his research.“I realized that my impact in the short term would be limited to the amount of chemistry experiments I could do with my hands,” he recalled.

Keeping Up with AI’s Increasingly Complex Networking Demands

Daehyeok Kim, Aditya Akella, and Venkat Arun against an abstract background of shapes.

09/24/2024 - The job of building computer networks that train and run large AI models is becoming increasingly complicated because traditional network designs can’t operate at the higher speeds that the AI workloads require and need to be tuned to a variety of communication endpoints (such as CPUs, graphics processing units and AI accelerators) that have widely different characteristics, including data generation speeds. Moreover, AI workloads require advanced network monitoring capabilities to quickly diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks.

New AI Institute Led by UT Researchers Will Accelerate Cosmic Discovery

Four quadrants of scientific-images come together, with webs showing bright spots for star formation, galaxy clustering, identifications of galaxies that are labeled and a futuristic network.

09/18/2024 - The University of Texas at Austin has been selected to lead the NSF-Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins, a new $20 million research initiative focused on using AI to explore the universe’s biggest mysteries, from dark matter to the origins of life. Greg Durrett, Associate Professor of Computer Science at UT, is a co-investigator on this groundbreaking project, further cementing UT’s leadership in AI research.

Podcast: Is it Time to Regulate AI?

A statue of a blindfolded woman in a toga holding a scale in one hand and a sword in the other, representing the legal system

09/12/2024 - Artificial intelligence is very loosely regulated in the U.S. What kinds of laws would help make AI safer and more useful for everyone?

UT Launches Nation’s First Robotics Program for Freshman Applicants

Three people standing in a robotics lab looking at a screen involving robotics.

09/05/2024 - The University of Texas at Austin has introduced what is believed to be the first undergraduate robotics program in the country that allows high school students to apply directly as part of their freshman admissions application. The honors program will integrate students as soon as they arrive on campus into the immersive and interdisciplinary curriculum, which includes hands-on research, engineering and computer science coursework, and participation in UT’s top-ranked Texas Robotics’ events and programs.

UT Computer Science Professor Trains AI Through Game Theory

Computer scientists Ryan Farell and Chandrajit Bajaj standing side-by-side in front of the visualization wall in the POB Vis Lab.

08/30/2024 - Computer science professor Chandrajit Bajaj was recently awarded funding by the U.S. Army Futures Command’s University Technology Development Division (UTDD), in support of DEVCOM C5ISR, for game theory research to develop artificial intelligence systems. The project will utilize Dynamic Belief Games to train AI agents to be better planning and decision support tools for next-generation communications systems.

Central Texas students start school year with new tool that could revolutionize education, experts say

Professor Greg Durrett teaches a course designed for educators that explains the ins and outs of large language models like Chat GPT.

08/22/2024 - AUSTIN (KXAN) — Students heading back to school this semester are entering the classroom with a new tool that experts say could soon be as common as a calculator. “It’s a very useful tool, and students are going to have to know how to use that tool when they should use that tool when they shouldn’t use the tool,” said Greg Durrett, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas in Austin.

Texas RoboCup Team on KXAN

NAO Humanoid robots playing soccer in the Intelligent Robotics lab in the UT Computer Science Gates Dell Complex.

08/12/2024 - Are AI robots the future of sports? These UT students think soAustin (KXAN) — A team of UT students, led by Professor Peter Stone, recently triumphed at the RoboCup Home competition in the Netherlands, where their AI-powered robots autonomously played soccer. The students believe their research is paving the way for a future where robots can compete against humans in sports, revolutionizing the field of AI robotics.

UT computer science lab announces way to make short-form content more accessible

Amy Pavel standing outside on UT Austin campus in a black button down shirt smiling at the camera.

08/09/2024 - The UT computer science lab, with faculty member Amy Pavel and recent graduate Tess Van Daele at the forefront, has developed an AI system called ShortScribe to enhance accessibility for visually impaired users of short-form videos on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. Pavel, an assistant computer science professor and co-author of the research paper, explained that the system utilizes AI technologies such as Optical Character Recognition, Automatic Speech Transmission, and GPT-4 to segment videos, transcribe speech, and create detailed audio descriptions.