Pitt Cyber Accelerator Grants (PCAG) provide initial funding for novel and innovative projects that advance Pitt Cyber’s mission: to bring the breadth of one of the world’s leading public research universities to bear on the critical questions of networks, data, and algorithms, with a focus on the ever-changing gaps among law, policy, and technology.
PCAG funding is to be used especially to advance projects that establish and extend key intellectual infrastructures, such as research and teaching in methods with broad application and utility across disciplines, and projects that bring together researchers, teachers, and/or students across fields of interest.
PCAG funding may be particularly useful in launching transdisciplinary projects that may later attract funding and sponsorship within the university, and/or from government, philanthropic, and industry partners.
Spring 2024 Recipients
Mitigating Misinformation in LLM-Generated Legal Summaries
Large Language Models and Generative AI have been used in the legal domain to generate summaries for lengthy legal documents. However, these generations frequently contain inaccurate information. This project aims to address the issue of misinformation in the legal domain by utilizing effective model editing techniques and developing reward models capable of identifying misinformation.
Lorraine Li, Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Information, Kevin Ashley, Professor, School of Law, and Ryan Shi, Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Information
Building Socially Responsible Machine Writing Tutors
This project will build a language model-based writer tutor to analyze college student writing. The tool is designed to more accurately correspond to the judgments and advice of professional instructors and the needs of actual students. The tool will also pay particular attention to ESL learners and writers to create a culturally and cross-linguistically responsive system.
Gayle Rogers, Andrew W. Mellon Professor and Chair of English, Department of English, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, Lorraine Li, Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Information, and Diane Litman, Professor, School of Computing and Information
Hemispheric Headspace: Interrogation and Exploration of the Influence of AI and the Digital Sphere on Real Life, Work, Education, and Political Realities in the Global South and the Global North
This workshop series brings faculty across disciplines and from universities in Pittsburgh and the Western Cape of South Africa together to explore the implications of current and recent developments in AI and digital tools that increasingly shape our lived experiences. We will discuss current and past definitions and descriptions of personhood in regards to digital versus machine age concerns pertaining to defining the human and the influence of capital on dehumanizing labor forces across regions and histories; generative language and the authenticity of utterance in the global north and the global south; legislation and regulation in the context of developing AI, in the context of colonial and neo-colonial histories in the global north and the global south; and preservation in analogue and digital forms.
- Hemispheric Headspace Keywords Map Companion
- Hemispheric Headspace Mind Map
- Hemispheric Headspace Workshop Summary
Jennifer Keating, Teaching Professor & Writing in the Disciplines Specialist, William S. Dietrich II Institute for Writing Excellence, Eleanor Mattern, Professor, School of Computing and Information.