Portfolio Category: distinguished_speakers_series

Title: Fast RL Abstract: Current RL algorithms, while strong in some ways, learn much more slowly than humans. This is caused, in part, by their lack of any experience whatsoever with the world. As a result, their early actions are completely random, and learning is a lot slower than desired. In reaction to this problem,…

Title: A New Architecture for Brain-inspired Computing Speaker:  Dharmendra S. Modha Abstract: I will describe a decade-long, multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional effort spanning neuroscience, supercomputing, and nanotechnology to build and demonstrate a brain-inspired computer and describe the architecture, programming model, and applications. For more information, see: modha.org. Bio: Dr. Dharmendra S. Modha is an IBM Fellow and IBM Chief…

Title: Is The Universe Continuous or Discrete? (And Why People in AI Should Care) Speaker:  Matt Ginsberg Abstract:  Recent years have seen increasing tension between people who believe in so-called "good old-fashioned AI", or GOFAI (and who believe that problems should in general be solved using discrete methods and without learning) and people who believe…

Title: Language Translation and Code-Breaking Speaker: Kevin Knight Abstract: In 1949, information theorist Warren Weaver suggested applying code-breaking methods to the problem of automatic language translation. He said: "When I look at an article in Russian, I say: this is really written in English, but it has been coded in some strange symbols. I will now proceed…

Title: Making Robots Believe Speaker:  Leslie Pack Kaelbling Abstract: The fields of AI and robotics have made great improvements in many individual subfields, including in motion planning, symbolic planning, probabilistic reasoning, perception, and learning.  Our goal is to develop an integrated approach to solving very large problems that are hopelessly intractable to solve optimally.  We make a…