News

Safe, clean and affordable drinking water is a human right in California. But making that legal requirement a reality is a difficult challenge exacerbated further by climate change. Two water engineers believe artificial intelligence can help. Working with UC Berkeley’s Data Science Discovery program students, they are building a chatbot they hope will help California Water Resources Board staff discern, communicate and enforce rules to...

Berkeley News: John Schulman cofounded the ambitious software company OpenAI in December 2015, shortly before finishing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley. At OpenAI, he led the reinforcement learning team that developed ChatGPT — a chatbot based on the company’s generative pre-trained (GPT) language models — which has become a global sensation, thanks to its ability to generate remarkably human-like...

School of Information: Nestled atop the sprawling Berkeley hills and on the ancestral land of the Chochenyo Ohlone stands the Lawrence Hall of Science, a place of scientific discovery and exploration. With opportunities to get up close and personal with animals, build and test inventions, and watch engaging 3D films, the Lawrence offers youth a chance to explore their STEM-related interests. However, one of the...

On March 14, 2020, the United States was on the brink of a pandemic. Covid-19 had killed at least 60 people and two cruise ships with ill passengers were set to dock in San Francisco. That’s when DJ Patil received a call: How can data help California combat this? So the former White House chief data scientist put together a plan. His team acquired hospital...

Technology companies are racing to release increasingly powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Some researchers claim this technology exhibits artificial general intelligence (AGI), a significant milestone where AI could independently learn and complete tasks like human beings. This technology has the power to change the world, said Stuart Russell, a UC Berkeley computer science professor and leading AI expert. It could improve quality of life for...

Data science has unlocked new potential to help understand and address challenges like human health and climate change. But it can be challenging to know how to work ethically with data, especially when it has major impacts on society. Enter the Data Science Ethos tool by the Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA). The alliance’s package of research-backed guidance and case studies show how to embed...

Berkeley News: It passed the bar exam, first with a mediocre score and then with a ranking among the top tier of newly minted lawyers. It scored better than 90% of SAT takers. It nearly aced the verbal section of the GRE — though it has room for improvement with AP Composition. In the months since the machine-learning interface ChatGPT debuted, hundreds of headlines and...

UC Berkeley’s Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) is seeking undergraduate students to join a new advisory committee, the division announced today. The CDSS Undergraduate Advisory Committee will offer recommendations to the division on its operations, as it works to become the first new college at Berkeley in more than 50 years. Undergraduate student nominations, including self-nominations, are invited by April 11. “As...

Thousands of UC Berkeley data science and computing students are preparing to graduate in May amidst a slew of technology company layoffs. Some are worried about finding a job. Berkeley advisors are urging expected graduates to take a beat and embrace a more nuanced job market view. They’re reminding students of what they have control over in their search and what they’ve already accomplished. And...

When Joyce Shen began teaching data science at UC Berkeley nearly a decade ago, she noticed a problem she’d also seen in industry. There were barely any women. The nascent data science field that would forever change how we live was being primarily developed by men, creating products that would shape society for decades. Today, due to intensive Berkeley recruitment efforts, she has seen the...