UT researchers awarded funding from new UT Austin-Amazon Science Hub

Six UT school and college students acquired inaugural funding from the UT Austin-Amazon Science Hub for his or her analysis on synthetic intelligence and machine studying.

Created in April, the Science Hub is a five-year collaborative effort between the College and Amazon to assist analysis in matters starting from machine studying to networking and communications. 

Greg Durrett, an affiliate laptop science professor, was awarded $75,000 to proceed his work in pure language processing — the methods that enable computer systems to know human language. 

“Lately with the event of issues like ChatGPT, we’re trying rather a lot on the capabilities of huge language fashions … significantly specializing in their potential to conduct complicated reasoning duties, after which how we will take into consideration making their outputs truthful,” Durrett stated. 

Durrett’s analysis makes use of these giant language fashions to confirm the accuracy of different language fashions.

“Massive language fashions are a number of the greatest instruments that we’ve for (fact-checking) as a result of it’s not a easy technique of trying it up in a database,” Durrett stated. “That’s form of the broad aim right here, to construct the system that may go all the way in which from some textual content produced by a mannequin to guarantee that all the things it says is factual.”

Durrett stated the funding will assist assist additional analysis into the accuracy of AI language fashions’ outputs.

“It’s been a lot talked about how these methods don’t all the time generate the proper stuff,” Durrett stated. “They could simply quote unquote, hallucinate details, or typically form of sew issues collectively in ways in which might misrepresent the sources, and so this type of stuff is just helpful insofar as we will belief it.”

Georgios Smyrnis, {an electrical} and laptop engineering doctoral scholar, acquired funding for his work on serving to computer systems distinguish between unlabeled information. 

“Say that you’ve a picture of a cat and a picture of a canine,” Smyrnis stated. “In these paradigms, you give the mannequin the pictures of the cats and canine, however you by no means explicitly inform them which is which, so this manner, you could use methods that let you differentiate between the information with out truly figuring out what the information means or the place the information is.”

Smyrnis stated his analysis has a variety of purposes outdoors of machine studying. The award will assist him create smaller fashions and fund the pc wanted for this analysis. 

“On the finish of the day, what’s essential about creating smaller fashions for this venture is to make them simple to make use of by just about everybody,” Smyrnis stated. “The best way it stands now, a serious bottleneck to utilizing such a mannequin is how expensive they’re to us, so by making them smaller and simpler to make use of, we hope to make them extra accessible.”

Durrett stated the UT Austin-Amazon Science Hub will advance analysis at UT by leveraging Amazon’s main improvements in language and dialog processing, which the corporate makes use of to develop merchandise like Alexa.

“There’s quite a lot of mutual profit that we will have by additional collaboration between UT and Amazon,” Durrett stated.

UT researchers awarded funding from new UT Austin-Amazon Science Hub

Six UT school and college students acquired inaugural funding from the UT Austin-Amazon Science Hub for his or her analysis on synthetic intelligence and machine studying.

Created in April, the Science Hub is a five-year collaborative effort between the College and Amazon to assist analysis in matters starting from machine studying to networking and communications. 

Greg Durrett, an affiliate laptop science professor, was awarded $75,000 to proceed his work in pure language processing — the methods that enable computer systems to know human language. 

“Lately with the event of issues like ChatGPT, we’re trying rather a lot on the capabilities of huge language fashions … significantly specializing in their potential to conduct complicated reasoning duties, after which how we will take into consideration making their outputs truthful,” Durrett stated. 

Durrett’s analysis makes use of these giant language fashions to confirm the accuracy of different language fashions.

“Massive language fashions are a number of the greatest instruments that we’ve for (fact-checking) as a result of it’s not a easy technique of trying it up in a database,” Durrett stated. “That’s form of the broad aim right here, to construct the system that may go all the way in which from some textual content produced by a mannequin to guarantee that all the things it says is factual.”

Durrett stated the funding will assist assist additional analysis into the accuracy of AI language fashions’ outputs.

“It’s been a lot talked about how these methods don’t all the time generate the proper stuff,” Durrett stated. “They could simply quote unquote, hallucinate details, or typically form of sew issues collectively in ways in which might misrepresent the sources, and so this type of stuff is just helpful insofar as we will belief it.”

Georgios Smyrnis, {an electrical} and laptop engineering doctoral scholar, acquired funding for his work on serving to computer systems distinguish between unlabeled information. 

“Say that you’ve a picture of a cat and a picture of a canine,” Smyrnis stated. “In these paradigms, you give the mannequin the pictures of the cats and canine, however you by no means explicitly inform them which is which, so this manner, you could use methods that let you differentiate between the information with out truly figuring out what the information means or the place the information is.”

Smyrnis stated his analysis has a variety of purposes outdoors of machine studying. The award will assist him create smaller fashions and fund the pc wanted for this analysis. 

“On the finish of the day, what’s essential about creating smaller fashions for this venture is to make them simple to make use of by just about everybody,” Smyrnis stated. “The best way it stands now, a serious bottleneck to utilizing such a mannequin is how expensive they’re to us, so by making them smaller and simpler to make use of, we hope to make them extra accessible.”

Durrett stated the UT Austin-Amazon Science Hub will advance analysis at UT by leveraging Amazon’s main improvements in language and dialog processing, which the corporate makes use of to develop merchandise like Alexa.

“There’s quite a lot of mutual profit that we will have by additional collaboration between UT and Amazon,” Durrett stated.

UT Musculoskeletal Institute awarded worldwide Worth-Primarily based Well being Care Prize

The Musculoskeletal Institute on the UT Well being Austin medical clinic received the 2023 Worth-Primarily based Well being Care Prize from a world jury for its progressive method to patient-centered well being care.

The Worth-Primarily based Well being Care Prize acknowledges medical initiatives from world wide that make use of a “basically new line of considering in creating wonderful affected person worth by way of actual outcomes,” in response to its web site. Nominees for this 12 months included initiatives from Australia, Italy, the Netherlands and Brazil.

The Musculoskeletal Institute not solely treats musculoskeletal problems however can also be pioneering a brand new solution to ship medication. Based on government director Karl Koenig, most healthcare companies are reimbursed by way of a fee-for-service system that requires a separate charge for every physician’s go to, lab and surgical procedure. The institute as an alternative argues for a condition-based care mannequin the place one charge is paid to the healthcare group initially of care to incentivize higher useful resource allocation towards the affected person.

“On the bottom, at the very least in our group, which means a multidisciplinary group,” Koenig mentioned. “We’ve got orthopedic surgeons, doctor’s assistants, chiropractors, bodily therapists, social staff, all engaged on one group in order that when the affected person is available in, we will present the entire care that they could want.”

Koenig mentioned the institute makes use of a really completely different metric for measuring success as they focus much less on the variety of sufferers they see or the variety of surgical procedures they carry out and as an alternative depend on patient-reported outcomes.

“We ask our sufferers to inform us how a lot their hip and knee ache, again ache or neck ache is affecting their high quality of life, after which we measure our success on the affected person telling us how a lot better we assist them get on common,” Koenig mentioned. “It’s actually revolutionary.”

Koenig mentioned the institute finally tries to make use of a holistic but pragmatic method to medication utility by addressing musculoskeletal circumstances within the context of a affected person’s general well being. 

“We assist quite a lot of sufferers to quit smoking, we assist quite a lot of sufferers to drop extra pounds, we assist quite a lot of sufferers to turn into extra energetic with our bodily remedy packages, and generally we do surgical procedure on these sufferers to assist them get extra energetic and keep wholesome, however we’re actually maintaining our eye on the prize,” Koenig mentioned. “And the north star is how can we truly assist folks to be more healthy slightly than simply maintain them after they get sick?”

Koenig mentioned the Musculoskeletal Institute was beforehand acknowledged within the U.S. for its trailblazing work, however to be in comparison with friends worldwide and are available out on high exhibits lots.

“It says lots in regards to the College of Texas, it says lots about Dell Medical Faculty and UT Well being Austin that we’re within the midst of constructing new packages, beginning a brand new medical college and staying true to our mission to actually revolutionize the way in which that sufferers get and keep wholesome,” Koenig mentioned.