[agents] Call for Challenge Problems Requiring AI/OR Collaboration

[Sven Koenig]

The CCC, in collaboration with INFORMS and ACM SIGAI, will be hosting 
the final workshop of a three-part series titled, Artificial 
Intelligence (AI)/Operations Research (OR), in late February or early 
March 2024 to set a course for fundamental research that needs the 
partnership of both disciplines. Organized by Yu Ding (Georgia Institute 
of Technology), Pascal Van Hentenryck (Georgia Institute of Technology), 
Sven Koenig (University of Southern California), Ramayya Krishnan 
(Carnegie Mellon University), Radhika Kulkarni (INFORMS), and Phebe 
Vayanos (University of Southern California), the workshop will focus on 
drafting a strategic plan for increasing the AI/OR partnership and on 
outlining real-world opportunities for collaboration, based on 
discussions from the previous two workshops.

For this workshop, *we are requesting proposals from the AI and OR 
communities for compelling and inspiring grand challenge problems of a 
theoretical or applied nature that:**
*

 1. *require the collaboration of AI and OR researchers and*
 2. *will result in basic research on the integration of AI and OR
    techniques that*
 3. *align with societal needs and national priorities with potential
    for real-world impact.*

We would like proposals to describe a challenge problem that will result 
in the integration of AI and OR methods and articulate the AI and OR 
methods needed, dataset availability (if applicable), method innovation, 
evaluation criteria, path to applications, and the potential to result 
in impact on societal needs and national priorities. Some questions to 
consider are:

 1. What are challenges that you believe will be faced to tackle this
    problem, and what are the mechanisms needed to address them?
 2. How can policies/mechanisms incentivize collaborations between the
    two communities?
 3. Why do you think the two communities need to collaborate to address
    this challenge?

Challenge problems can be submitted using this form 
<https://form.jotform.com/232065901251043>. Submissions can be written 
in paragraph or bullet point style formats. Your submission should 
convincingly explain why it satisfies points 1, 2, and 3 above and how 
it addresses questions 1, 2, and 3. Some high level ideas of challenges 
include leveraging optimization to mitigate bias in large language 
models, or using robust optimization to enhance privacy of generative 
AI. The deadline for submission is September 15, 2023.

Selected submitters will be invited to participate in the third workshop 
to help shape the discussion around collaboration between AI and OR 
communities and researchers and to help break barriers in such 
collaborations.

At the final workshop, in addition to laying out challenge problems, we 
will also outline additional strategies that will help both communities 
to impact national priorities, such as creating a joint summer school 
where AI and OR experts provide multidisciplinary training in AI and OR 
to Ph.D. students, and other ideas from the community. The objective for 
the third workshop is to write a final report that lays out a blueprint 
for activities that increase the collaboration between the AI and OR 
communities.

To learn more about the AI/OR Workshop series, please visit the First 
<https://cra.org/ccc/events/artifical-intelligence-operations-research-workshop/> 
and Second 
<https://cra.org/ccc/events/artificial-intelligence-operations-research-workshop-ii/> 
workshop event pages, and read the Workshop 1 Report Out 
<https://cra.org/ccc/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/10/Filler-AIOR-document.pdf> 
and the Workshop 2 Report Out 
<https://cra.org/ccc/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/AI-OR-II-Workshop-Report-Out..pdf>.

*Please remember to submit your ideas **here 
<https://form.jotform.com/232065901251043>**by September 15, 2023.*
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