July 2021

AI2 Newsletter

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Top story

Scientific publishing's accessibility problem
AI2 recently discovered that only 2.4% of scientific papers are actually accessible to blind or low-vision (BLV) readers. Interviews suggest that BLV readers abandoned papers up to "60-70% of the time" due to accessibility issues.

A two-part series by researcher Lucy Lu Wang quantifies this extensive problem and introduces SciA11y , a new system built as a first important step toward truly accessible scientific research.
 
Learn more ➞

A question-answering model you can use
The NLP community has built many question answering (QA) datasets in recent years to measure how well a model can pull relevant information out of text. We wanted to put this technology to use on a truly tough reading challenge in an area we know well; scientific publications. Introducing Qasper , a model that can process entire scientific documents and answer your questions about their content, making science understanding more efficient.
 

Oren Etzioni appointed to President Biden's new AI task force
AI2's CEO Oren Etzioni is one of 12 distinguished members of the new National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force. The group is tasked with developing a strategy for democratizing access to stores of demographic, health, and behavioral data, with the ultimate goal of driving AI innovation and ensuring the US remains at the forefront of critical technical advancements.
 

Want to learn more about AI2's work or connect with an expert? Reach us at press @allenai.org.

A photo of AI2's CEO Oren Etzioni.

Interview

Oren Etzioni
AI2's CEO Oren Etzioni discusses bridging the gap between AI research and engineering, improving the fairness of ML solutions, the next big AI milestones we're working toward at AI2, and lots more.



Read more on TheSequence  ➞
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Feature

X4IMPACT
X4 IMPACT  aims to spark innovation and create social impact through collaboration, partnership, and the democratization of access to data. Check out their free interactive report the social development goal of Industry, Innovation, & Infrastructure in the US.

Learn more on x4i.org  ➞  

More from us 
➞ Engineering Principles at AI2

➞ AI2 Incubator's brand new website

➞ China closes in on the US in AI research

➞ Semantic Scholar enables better peer reviews
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