ARIA Institute

ARIA Institute is a Brown University-based national AI research consortium funded by a five-year, $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The institute's full name is the AI Research Institute on Interaction for AI Assistants (ARIA), and its mission is to develop a new generation of AI assistants capable of trustworthy, sensitive, and context-aware interactions with people.

As a key use case, ARIA focuses on mental and behavioral health applications, where AI safety and reliability are paramount. The institute brings together researchers from across the country with expertise in computer science, psychology, neuroscience, and related fields. Institutions nationwide may participate in collaborative research under the ARIA umbrella.

Researchers launch Brown University-based national institute on AI in mental health | Brown University Researchers launch Brown University-based national institute on AI in mental health ARIA, a Brown-based research consortium supported by a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation, welcomed scientists from across the U.S. to kick off its five-year program with a launch event in Providence.

Ellie Pavlick welcomes researchers to the kickoff meeting of Brown's NSF AI institute. Photo by Curtis Stoychoff PROVIDENCE, R. I.

[Brown University] — Researchers from across the nation with expertise in computer science, psychology, neuroscience and other areas gathered at Brown University from Nov. 20-21 to formally launch Brown’s new National Science Foundation-funded AI research institute. In July, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a five-year, $20 million grant to create the AI Research Institute on Interaction for AI Assistants (ARIA).

Ellie Pavlick, an associate professor of computer science at Brown who is leading the multi-institution project, said the goal is to develop a new generation of AI assistants capable of trustworthy, sensitive and context-aware interactions with people.

As one critical use case for advanced AI assistants, the team is focusing its research on mental and behavioral health, an area in which AI use is growing rapidly and in which trustworthiness and safety are paramount. Pavlick said that the late-November convening offered an initial opportunity for the ARIA team to get together in-person to discuss how their work will unfold over the next five years.

The objective, she said, was to map the intersections between the team’s research strengths and the most pressing open questions in AI development. “With a group like this addressing a problem that’s so enormous, there are probably 40 different research themes that we could choose,” Pavlick said.

“We wanted to start thinking about which five or so themes are ones that best build on our research strengths and are also really important to the problem. ” On the meeting’s first day, team members held brainstorming sessions to discuss research questions and approaches to answering them.

On day two, the group hosted a public discussion in the Brown’s Engineering Research Center’s Hazeltine Commons to introduce ARIA’s work to the wider research community. “This was never meant to be — nor does NSF want it to be — something where we just go back to our labs and let people know in five years what we came up with,” Pavlick said.

“So this event was about letting people know what we’re thinking about and how to interact with us. ” The public event included a presentation by Julian Jara-Ettinger, a psychology professor at Yale University whose research focuses on human social intelligence. Jara-Ettinger discussed the ways in which the human brain develops methods that enable people to understand the minds of others and behave accordingly.

An understanding of how humans accomplish this incredibly complex task will be important to designing artificial systems that are able to achieve something similar. Jara-Ettinger’s talk was followed by a response and discussion with Nicole Nugent, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown and a clinical psychologist.

Nugent said she appreciated ARIA’s research approach, which addresses technical, theoretical and clinical questions surrounding the use of AI in mental health. “One of the things that I'm so excited about for your center is that you have built, very intentionally, these interdisciplinary connections,” Nugent said. “You have… cognitive scientists, you have computer scientists, you have mental health folks.

I would encourage everyone here today to think about how you can take this interdisciplinary approach and keep moving it forward. ” Also at Friday’s event, ARIA researchers hailing from Colby College, Dartmouth College, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California, San Diego, the University of New Mexico and elsewhere gave mini-presentations outlining research themes that will guide ARIA’s work.

Those themes include AI interpretability (understanding the process by which AI systems arrive at their responses); adaptability (how AI systems can react appropriately to different users and different situations); and participatory design (how to engage stakeholders in the design of AI systems).

Another key area of discussion was trustworthiness and how the scientists might develop a Consumer Reports-style measurement of trustworthy AI systems in mental health. Brown Provost Francis J. Doyle, who opened the event with introductory remarks, said he’s confident that Brown’s collaborative ethos make the University an ideal home base for ARIA’s work over the next five years.

“To be successful, institutes like ARIA really need to be nexus points for scientific innovation — building collaborations on and off campus, and facilitating connections between researchers and practitioners alike, both within and outside the academy,” Doyle said. “Brown could not be more proud — and prepared — to do this work, building on our great strengths… in interdisciplinary collaboration and transcending boundaries.

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