Prof. dr. sc. Iven Mareels predavanje: “Artificial intelligence – Perspectives: a brief history, present developments and future promises”

Predavanje će se održati 5.4.2019. s početkom u 12:00 sati u predavaonici P1 u prizemlju Tehničkog fakulteta.

Predavanje je otvoreno za sve zainteresirane.

Sažetak:The Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) completed in December 2018 a horizon scanning report on Artificial Intelligence (AI), described as, (citing from ACOLA’s www-site) “AI provides us with myriad new opportunities and potential on the one hand and presents global risks on the other. If responsibly developed, AI has the capacity to enhance wellbeing and provide benefits throughout society. This ACOLA Horizon Scanning Report places society at the core of AI development and explores issues specific to Australia and New Zealand such as our workforce, our education system, cultural considerations and our regulatory environment. It identifies areas of importance to Australia and New Zealand and provides a comprehensive interdisciplinary study to map and establish a detailed understanding of the opportunities, benefits and risks presented by AI. Although some of the opportunities for AI remain on the distant horizon, this anticipated disruption will require a measured response from government and industry and our actions today will set a course towards or away from these opportunities and their associated risks. It is hoped that the findings of this report can contribute to the effective and ethical development of AI as an opportunity to improve societal wellbeing.”

In this talk I draw on the observations from the above report, reflecting first on the history of AI (searching back well before it was called AI) and then touch on the present day economics of AI, and how this combines with the readily available compute technology to herald a global industrial revolution that has the potential to affect every job. Even so, there remains much research work to be done before we see true (super) human like generalized AI in action. How we harness the true potential, and limit the consequences of unacceptable exploitation may well define what it means to be human in the 21st century.



O predavaču:

Since Prof. Iven Mareels is the Lab Director, IBM Research Australia. He is an honorary Professor at the University of Melbourne. Prior to this he was the Dean of Engineering at the University of Melbourne (2007-2018).

He received the PhD in Systems Engineering from the Australian National University in 1987, and the Master of Engineering (Electromechanical) from Gent University in 1982.

At IBM Research Australia he leads the development of the next generation of artificial intelligence, blockchain technologies and quantum computing software. The lab serves the IBM Research motto “Famous for science and vital to IBM”. The application domains are health and medical systems, financial services, and the Internet-of-Things. The main implementation modality is to build on and to exploit IBM’s AI, cloud, and edge computing assets.

Prof. Mareels has published more than 500 peer reviewed publications, including five books. He is a co-inventor on a suite of 32 international patents. He has supervised 42 PhD students.

Prof. Mareels is a Commander in the Order of the Crown of Belgium, a Fellow of The Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering Australia; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (USA), the International Federation of Automatic Control, Engineers Australia and he is a Foreign Member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.