IIIT Bangalore holds annual workshop Web Science for Development (WS4D 2023)

Bangalore, 21 March 2023: The International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIITB) premier know-how institute in Bangalore hosted Web Science for Development (WS4D 2023) workshop which noticed professionals from a number of domains, addressing totally different thematic issues pertaining to the usage of internet and cell applied sciences in developmental efforts.

The purpose of the workshop was to foster a neighborhood of practitioners, researchers, entrepreneurs, college students, and coverage makers to collectively handle socially related alternatives and challenges from the net and cell applied sciences. The theme of this 12 months’s WS4D workshop was sustainable improvement and digital capabilities.

Speaking concerning the workshop Prof. Srinath Srinivasa, Dean (R&D), IIIT Bangalore, stated,

“The Internet and the World Wide Web have caused huge adjustments, which have challenged standard worldviews about virtually all features of our lives. Thanks to the net, we not suppose in the identical manner we did, about schooling, governance, enterprise, media, leisure, and absolutely anything else. Web and cell applied sciences have huge potential to deal with the developmental wants of enormous nations like India, and there’s a urgent want for appropriate fashions for serving to us perceive learn how to obtain this. The WS4D workshop collection goals to create an interdisciplinary dialogue between totally different stakeholders to collectively work in the direction of this imaginative and prescient.”

On the first-day keynote handle was delivered by Prof. Dame Wendy Hall, Executive Director of the Web Science Institute on the University of Southampton. On the second day, Prof. Noshir Contractor, Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioural Sciences (McCormick, SoC, Kellogg) delivered the keynote handle. He stated, “Web Science underscores the important significance of addressing the examine of the Web as an inter-discipline. The Web is much too important to our societal well-being to be left to anybody or perhaps a few disciplines. If you might be an undergrad and wish to resolve the world’s issues, you may be properly served to get a level in Computer Science. But for those who resolve to not get an undergraduate diploma in Computer Science, you may be properly served by going for postgraduate research in philosophy, regulation, or the social sciences – to resolve the issues laptop science is creating on the planet”

Advances on the Web proceed to evolve with Generative AI and Large Language Models equivalent to ChatGPT being the most recent. One of the teachings now we have discovered from the historical past of know-how is that the hype round these applied sciences leads us to overestimate, for higher and for worse, the results of those improvements within the quick time period. And concurrently, we underestimate their societal impacts in the long run, added Prof. Noshir.

Mr. Srikanth Karra, Chief Human Resource Officer, Mphasis, a number one IT providers and options supplier, who had powered the workshop as a part of their CSR initiative to setup the CoE for Cognitive Computing at IIIT-B, commented, “Our partnership with IIIT Bangalore has been worthwhile in driving our shared mission of leveraging cutting-edge know-how to positively impression society. The WS4D workshop is a testomony to our dedication to encouraging dialogue and data alternate between academia and the business. The platform creates a coalition of tons of of vibrant minds who come collectively to work in the direction of the frequent purpose of growing greener applied sciences for a sustainable future. It was an honour for us to host famend scientists equivalent to Prof. Dame Wendy Hall, researchers and students who supplied invaluable info on the use and impression of internet and cell applied sciences within the improvement of at this time’s society. Through this collaboration, we purpose to create insights into the results that the web and the world extensive internet have on how we see the world and its results on how we design options to our shared issues.”