Michael R. Scheessele

Education

• 2001 – PhD Quantitative and Mathematical Psychology – Purdue University
• 1998 – MS Quantitative and Mathematical Psychology – Purdue University
• 1994 – MS Computer Science – DePaul University
• 1983 – BS Computer Science: Information Systems – Purdue University

Research Interests 

Research interests: Artificial intelligence ethics; artificial intelligence systems, especially psychologically plausible artificial vision and problem-solving systems.

Recent Grants 

• SMART Summer Fellowship:
  (Summer 2020): Mentor to Ben Bavar (student) for the project: "Testing Intuitions about Blaming Robots."
  Student award: $3400
  Faculty stipend: $1700
• Faculty Research Grant:
  (March 2018): Indiana University South Bend Faculty Research Grant for $8,500.00 for the project: "Anthropocentrism is defensible in determining the moral status of intelligent machines."
• Supplemental Travel Grant:
  (February 2018): $1,000 to present my paper: "A framework for grounding the moral status of intelligent machines." Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society (AIES) 2018, New Orleans, LA. Feb. 2-3, 2018.
• (2017) Indiana University New Frontiers in the Arts & Humanities Experimentation
• Fellowship. Amount: $14,988. Project title: Could we have moral obligations to “intelligent” machines?

Selected Publications 

Refereed Journal Articles:

• Scheessele, M.R. (2021). The hard limit on human nonanthropocentrism. AI & Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01182-4.
  (Link to paper: https://rdcu.be/chNei )
• Scheessele, M. R., Dinh, H., & Ananth, M. (2015). On adding a critical thinking module to a discrete structures course. The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 30 (6), 97-103.
• Ananth, M., & Scheessele, M. R. (2012). Exempting all minimal-risk research from IRB review: pruning or poisoning the regulatory tree? IRB: Ethics & Human Research, 34 (2), 9-14.
• Scheessele, M.R., & Chaaban, I. (2008). Spatiotemporal context influences perception of an ambiguous target in visual search. Perception & Psychophysics, 70 (2), 190-198.
• Scheessele, M. R., & Pizlo, Z. (2007). Does contour classification precede contour grouping in perception of partially visible figures? Perception, 36, 558-580.
• Scheessele, M.R. (2007). The Two Cultures: a zero-sum game? Forum on Public Policy Online, Winter 2007 edition. http://www.forumonpublicpolicy.com/archive07/scheesele.pdf

Refereed Conference Proceedings:

• Scheessele, M.R. (2018). A Framework for Grounding the Moral Status of Intelligent Machines. Proceedings of 2018 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES'18), February 2-3, 2018, New Orleans, LA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3278721.3278743 
  (Link to paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3278721.3278743 )
• Chaaban, I. Y., & Scheessele, M. R. (2009). Exploitation of domain knowledge in the recognition of handwritten ZIP codes. Proceedings of the twentieth Midwest Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science conference, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, IN, 20, 66-73.
• Scheessele, M. R., & Schriefer, T. (2006). Poker as a group project for Artificial Intelligence. Proceedings of the thirty-seventh SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer Science Education, Houston, TX, 37, 548-552.
• Scheessele, M. R., & Perez, T. M. (2005). ‘Bottom-up’ cues aid perception of ambiguous, partially visible figures. Proceedings of the sixteenth Midwest Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science conference, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, 16, 83-90.

Publications (invited):

• Scheessele, M. R. (2010). CS expertise for Institutional Review Boards [Letter to the editor]. Communications of the ACM, 53 (8), 7.
• Scheessele, M. R. (2003). A vision of interdisciplinary research. APS Observer, 16 (7), 19. Pizlo, Z., & Scheessele, M. R. (1998). Perception of 3D scenes from pictures. Proceedings of the SPIE conference, San Jose, CA, 3299. 410-423.
• Scheessele, M. R., Graham, S. M., & Pizlo, Z. (1996). The exponential pyramid as a model of the human visual system. Proceedings of the ninth workshop on image and multidimensional signal processing, IEEE Signal Processing Society and IS&T The Society of Imaging Science and Technology, Belize City, Belize. 108-109.