NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Aim and scope
Submissions are solicited for the ICLR 2019 AI for Social Good workshop focusing on social problems for which artificial intelligence has the potential to offer meaningful solutions.

Subject areas address opportunities for AI to impact society by reducing human suffering and improving democratic institutions. They include:

• Education
• Protecting democracy
• Urban planning
• Assistive technology for people with disabilities
• Health
• Agriculture
• Environmental sustainability
• Social welfare and justice
• Sustainable development

We accept submissions relating to at least one of the previously mentioned domains. We encourage submissions that have interdisciplinary collaborations between machine learning and problem domain experts. We especially encourage work where machine learning and in particular representation learning could meaningfully amplify existing efforts for social good. We invite two types of submissions:

• Short Papers Track aka Track 1 (Up to four page papers + unlimited pages for citations) for oral and/or poster presentation. The short papers should focus on past and current research work, showcasing actual results and demonstrating beneficial effects on society. We also accept short papers of recently published or submitted journal contributions to give authors the opportunity to present their work and obtain feedback from conference attendees.
• Problem Introduction Track aka Track 2 (Application form, up to five page responses + unlimited pages for citations) which will present a specific solution that will be shared with stakeholders, scientists, and funders. The workshop will provide a suite of questions designed to: (1) estimate the feasibility and impact of the proposed solutions, and (2) estimate the importance of data in their implementation. The application responses should highlight ideas that have not yet been implemented in practice but can lead to real impact. The projects may be at varying degrees of development, from formulation as a data problem to structure for effective deployment. The workshop provides a supportive platform for developing these early-stage or hobby proposals into real projects. This process is designed to foster sharing different points of view ranging from the scientific assessment of feasibility, discussion of practical constraints that may be encountered, and attracting interest from philanthropists invited to the event. Accepted submissions may be promoted to the wider AI solutions community following the workshop via the AI Commons, with whom we are partnering to promote the longer-term development of projects.

Submission details
All submissions must be in PDF format. Submissions are limited to four content pages for the short papers track and five content page for the problem introduction track, including all figures and tables. Submissions for each type of paper must be in their respective formats specified below. Reviewing will be double blind for Track 1.

For Track 2, due to the specific nature of the submissions, reviewing will be a two step process: A pre-selection phase based on the submitted form. This will be double blind. A follow-up phase where pre-selected teams interact with mentors. This will result in a final selection, which will be non-anonymous.

Camera-ready papers will be due in advance of the workshop. Final acceptance of a submission will be conditioned on providing a camera-ready version of the paper that fits our formatting instructions. Submissions will be considered non-archival and can be submitted elsewhere after the conference. Papers that are over length or violate the author guidelines format will be rejected without review.