Assistant Professor in Building Human-Centered, Ethical, and Responsible AI Systems, 2025

Description

Application review and scheduling of initial zoom interviews will begin on November 1, 2024. The last day to apply is December 1, 2024. The full schedule, including onsite interviews dates, is below.

The School of Information (iSchool) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) invites applicants for up to two tenure-track Assistant Professor positions to start in Fall 2025. Candidates will be expected to conduct innovative and impactful research and to teach at both graduate and undergraduate levels. Tenure-track faculty in our iSchool normally have a 2/1 teaching load, with various opportunities for course release, particularly pre-tenure. Salaries are competitive.

As an interdisciplinary academic unit, our faculty are drawn from a wide range of different disciplines and collaborate broadly with other units on campus. We welcome applications from various disciplines including (but not limited to): information science, computer science, data science, electrical and computer engineering, human-centered computing, computational science, computational linguistics, and design.  We seek strong scholars with compelling research agendas, regardless of disciplinary background. Applicants, especially those unfamiliar with Information Schools, are welcome to contact us prior to submitting their application to discuss how their research connects to our school (see contact address below). See resources from the international iSchools organization for additional background.

Building AI Systems

We seek candidates who investigate human-centered artificial intelligence (AI) systems through designing, building, and technically evaluating such systems. Our call is intended to be broadly inclusive of the range of AI subdisciplines and areas such as (but not limited to): machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), computer vision (CV), and generative AI and large language models (LLMs), etc. Candidates should develop AI systems in their research that advance support for human work or activities, e.g., by augmenting and amplifying the capabilities of individuals or groups of people.

Research directions in this area may include (but are not limited to):

• Innovative methods and applications that integrate AI with human computation
• Complementary human-AI teaming and supportive workflow design
• Human-in-the-loop decision-making and decision-support
• AI-assisted data annotation
• Accelerating and improving human-centered AI evaluation protocols
• Imagining other novel forms of human-AI partnerships

Potential outcomes of such research may include (but are not limited to):

• Advancing fundamental understanding of the nature and range of human-AI partnerships, as well as how best to design, build, and evaluate them
• Investigating potential productivity benefits, such as the speed, scale, quality, and/or economics of human labor with vs. without AI-augmentation
• Advancing ethical and responsible design for system users, AI supply-chain workers, and/or society at-large around issues such as: trustworthiness and reliability; transparency and interpretability; fairness and social justice (for both AI users and workers); and accountability and algorithmic recourse
• Protecting private and sensitive data; the information environment and information integrity; human safety, health, and wellbeing; and the environment, via sustainable, green computing

AI at UT Austin and the iSchool

We anticipate that faculty hired by this search will greatly benefit from UT’s strong and continuing investments in AI at-large, as well as its investments in responsible AI in particular.

UT Austin has a world-class reputation for AI research and education, with consistently high rankings for our AI programs across campus. We have largest AI program from a tier-one university (our online MS in Artificial Intelligence). Launched in 2023, this is the first large-scale degree program of its kind and the only master’s degree program in AI from a top-ranked institution priced close to $10,000. This complements UT’s existing online master’s programs in computer science and data science, highlighting some of the many AI-related programs and courses offered across campus.

This year, UT announced a “Year of AI”, committing to invest significant additional resources in AI research and education. This included the launching of a new Center for Generative AI, which hosts the world’s largest academic GPU cluster and whose team includes a member of the iSchool faculty. The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) provides world-class AI compute resources to UT faculty and received a $457M award this year from the national science foundation (NSF) to create a new leadership class computing facility expected to provide a 100x improvement for AI applications. In 2020, the NSF also selected UT to lead the $20M NSF AI Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning (IFML), UT was recently awarded a second $20M Institute, the NSF-Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins (CosmicAI), co-directed by an iSchool faculty member.

Responsible AI at UT Austin and the iSchool

As prominently noted at https://yearofai.utexas.edu, “Responsible AI for a Better Tomorrow” is key to UT Austin’s vision for the future of AI technologies. In 2019, UT’s president announced a campus-wide responsible AI initiative, Good Systems (http://goodsystems.utexas.edu), that today boasts over 120 active researchers across 30 academic units. Good Systems equips the university with the structural capacity to integrate technology, policy, law, and ethics in the pursuit of societal good. The iSchool’s faculty have played a prominent role in Good Systems, serving in the overall leadership team and leading its core research projects. Two iSchool faculty also recently helped secure a 5-year, $3M NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) award to address the challenge of integrating responsible and ethical AI at all stages of development, design, and deployment of AI technologies (https://ethicalai.utexas.edu). This also led to the creation of a new cross-campus Graduate Portfolio Program in Ethical AI. Multiple campus-wide cluster hires from the provost’s office have yielded iSchool hires in ethical AI and protecting the information environment. Additional work on responsible AI in the iSchool includes (but is not limited to) research on responsible AI policy, design, and data collection and stewardship, including the ethical sourcing of AI training data.

Qualifications

Applicants must hold a Ph.D. in a field relevant to their area of research and teaching or convincingly demonstrate they will complete the degree before starting (e.g., by documenting a scheduled defense). In general, we seek candidates with outstanding records of research, teaching, service, and leadership abilities, with a commitment to shaping the future of our iSchool and conducting innovative research in their respective research field(s). Applications should make a compelling case for the intellectual contribution and merit of their research agenda. Candidates are encouraged to identify the research communities in which they belong and to which their research trajectory will contribute.

Application Instructions

We plan to conduct interview applicants on-site in January 2025 (see schedule below). Applicants are requested to block time on their calendars now for a potential on-site interview.

• Friday, November 1: We will begin reviewing applications and scheduling zoom interviews with the search committee for selected candidates.
• Sunday, December 1: Last day to submit an application to this search. We do not guarantee consideration of any applications received after this date.
• Monday, January 13 – Thursday, January 23: on-site interviews for selected applications

Required materials include:

1. A current CV
2. A cover letter highlighting your fit to our position, school, and university (we suggest 1-2 pages)
3. A statement of your research plans (we suggest 2-4 pages)
4. Up to 3 research papers, such as peer-reviewed articles to which you contributed significantly
5. A teaching statement (we suggest 1-2 pages)
6. Names and contact details of 3 references who have agreed to provide a reference letter (we will only contact and solicit letters from your references later in the process, if warranted).

Please direct all questions regarding this search to [email protected].

All faculty positions are based in Austin, TX. Successful candidates residing outside of the Austin area will be expected to relocate. For more information on how to apply, please visit our Jobs at the iSchool webpage. Applications can be submitted via Interfolio’s Faculty Search solution. If you do not have a Dossier account with Interfolio, you will be prompted to create a free account prior to applying for the position.

About the UT Austin School of Information (iSchool)

The UT Austin iSchool is a premier research and education program for the 21st century field of information. We are a founding member of the international iSchools organization and have a long history of interdisciplinary scholarship and research focused on the human, social, cultural, and technical aspects of information. Our program is consistently ranked among the top five programs in information in the world. We are a stand-alone school with strong connections across the university and with other institutions nationally and internationally. We are particularly interested in applicants who will further strengthen and extend our collaborative network. For more details on our current degree offerings, see the iSchool’s academic programs.

Community and Belonging

Our iSchool proudly welcomes students, staff, faculty, and community members from all walks of life,  backgrounds, and origins. UT Austin obtained the Seal of Excelencia for its Commitment to Latino Student Success in 2020 and received the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) award again in 2023, continuing a long streak of HEED awards. Our iSchool’s core values embrace an interdisciplinary approach to serve humanity, put people first, and develop technology for social good.

About The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)

UT Austin has an internationally distinguished faculty making it one of the world’s leading research universities. UT Austin embraces interdisciplinary research and is home to more than 200 dedicated research units, centers, and research grand challenges. In 2020, UT Austin proudly earned the Hispanic Serving Institution designation. See our About UT Austin webpage for further information.

About Austin

Austin is a city bursting with entrepreneurial spirit, and a passion for discovery. Austin has a vibrant, internationally renowned music, film, and art scene, along with a thriving economy that leads the way in the technology, engineering, and health care sectors. It is a city with natural beauty in abundance, with a glittering river that runs through the center of the city, year-round sunshine, and a location in the picturesque Hill Country of central Texas. Austin is a creative center that attracts the best and the brightest from around the world. Often referred to as the Live Music Capital of the World, Austin hosts major annual events such as the Austin City Limits (ACL) music festival and South by Southwest (SXSW), which includes Education, Film, Music, and Interactive Festivals. Austin serves as the home for corporate headquarters and research and development centers for many Fortune 500 companies and new startups providing opportunities for collaboration and student placements for internships and careers. It is the capital city of Texas, and home to many cultural heritage institutions and opportunities in the public sector. Austin is a regular among top places to live and work lists, and has many highly rated public schools. See our About Austin webpage for more information on living and working in Austin.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

The University of Texas at Austin, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions.