ASPI News and Events

“The risk is greater than zero, that's for sure, and it's certainly higher than anything that has been accomplished on a commercial basis,” says University Professor Sean O'Keefe.

“Levelling Up Innovation in Local Government: An Evaluation of International Smart City Competitions,” co-authored by Austin Zwick, associate teaching professor of policy studies, and Aaron Eben, Maxwell undergraduate student in policy studies, was published by the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance.

Longer storage periods open the data up to potential hacks and misuse, says Johannes Himmelreich, assistant professor of public administration and international affairs. “Even if SPD is doing everything right, and I expect them to do everything right, the vendor might have their own policies or data leaks that might be problematic,” he says. 

“We think the current civil service system is badly in need of reform. But the blueprints offered by both left and right are problematic. One side is firmly rooted in a status quo that (inadvertently or otherwise) impedes accountability, and the other could end up politicizing the very civil servants who should be politically neutral,” writes University Professor Sean O'Keefe and his co-authors.

“Residential mobility and persistently depressed voting among disadvantaged adults in a large housing experiment,” co-authored by Assistant Professor of Political Science Baobao Zhang, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Autonomous Systems Policy Institute (ASPI) at Syracuse University seeks to create a collaborative forum among designers, engineers, social scientists, and scholars in the arts and humanities to discuss emerging technologies.

The student-driven award acknowledges faculty who have had a significant impact and positive influence on graduate education because of their superior graduate-level teaching, dedication to departmental and community presence and excellence in research and creative activities. 

Debbie Urbanski '04 visited ASPI to discuss her first novel "After World." The book, released last December, is receiving increasing attention and appraise from across the literary world.

University Professor Sean O’Keefe says whoever is appointed at Boeing will need to be able to listen to the concerns of the industry. In particular, they will need to work hand in hand with its airline customers—from Alaska Airlines to United—to make sure safety issues will be the focus in the months ahead, he says.

The Autonomous Systems Policy Institute, housed in the Maxwell School, is an inaugural member of U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium.

"Against 'Democratizing AI'," authored by Johannes Himmelreich, assistant professor of public administration and international affairs, was published in AI & Society: Knowledge, Culture and Communication.

"Examining the Smart City Generational Model: Conceptualizations, Implementations, and Infrastructure Canada's Smart City Challenge," co-authored by Austin Zwick, assistant teaching professor of policy studies, was published in Urban Affairs Review.

In the glory days of the American labor movement, when unions were strong and wages rose alongside productivity, “organized workers could cash that out as more free time,” says Aaron Benanav, assistant professor of sociology. “But for decades, workers haven’t even been getting that choice because, for the most part, productivity growth has ended up as higher profits and more inequality.”

Two Syracuse University institutes are welcoming researchers, academic leaders, policymakers and journalists for discussions in Washington, D.C., about innovations, vulnerabilities and the future of artificial intelligence. The two-day AI Policy Symposium that begins Thursday in the nation’s capital is organized by the Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship and the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute.

The Autonomous Systems Policy Institute has partnered with the Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship for the two-day event. 

The Maxwell School faculty member will use the fellowship to engage the public on perceptions and governance of artificial intelligence.

“Sixty-nine percent of those who currently live in the U.S. say that visa and immigration issues are a serious problem for them conducting AI research,” says Baobao Zhang, assistant professor of political science and senior research associate in the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute.

“I think about academics having to write grants all the time,” says Aaron Benanav, assistant professor of sociology, as an example. Those can be formulaic and would take far less time with the help of a machine. In programming, it’s helping engineers “write up basic outlines of code or sometimes like whole sections of code,” he says. 

The funding will support his research on ethical dilemmas in data science, culminating in a co-authored book manuscript.