Talk recap

Speaker Biography

Jitendra Malik is the Arthur J. Chick Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, is on the faculty of the Department of Bioengineering, and is a member of the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Cognitive Science and Vision Science groups. Malik's research group has worked on many topics in computer vision, human visual perception, robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, generating several well-known concepts and algorithms. Over his 37 years at UC Berkeley, he has mentored more than 70 Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows. His honors include the 2013 IEEE PAMI-TC Distinguished Researcher in Computer Vision Award, the 2014 K.S. Fu Prize from the International Association of Pattern Recognition, the 2016 ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award, the 2018 IJCAI Award for Research Excellence in AI, and the 2019 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award. Malik is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Location: Chevron Auditorium, International House, 2299 Piedmont Avenue

It is reasonable to expect that artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities will eventually exceed those of humans across a range of real-world decision-making scenarios. Should this be a cause for concern, as Alan Turing and others have suggested? Will we lose control over our future? Or will AI complement and augment human intelligence in beneficial ways? It turns out that both views are correct, but they are talking about completely different forms of AI. To achieve the positive outcome, a fundamental reorientation of the field is required. Instead of building systems that optimize arbitrary objectives, we need to learn how to build systems that will, in fact, be beneficial for us. Russell will argue that this is possible as well as necessary. The new approach to AI opens up many avenues for research and brings into sharp focus several questions at the foundations of moral philosophy.

Speaker Biography:,

Stuart Russell, OBE, is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and an honorary fellow of Wadham College at the University of Oxford. He is a leading researcher in artificial intelligence and the author, with Peter Norvig, of “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach,” the standard text in the field. He has been active in arms control for nuclear and autonomous weapons. His latest book, “Human Compatible,” addresses the long-term impact of AI on humanity.

Location: Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA

Young children's learning may be an important model for artificial intelligence (AI). Comparing children and artificial agents in the same tasks and environments can help us understand the abilities of existing systems and create new ones. In particular, many current large data-supervised systems, such as large language models (LLMs), provide new ways to access information collected by past agents. However, they lack the kinds of exploration and innovation that are characteristic of children. New techniques may help to instantiate child-like curiosity, exploration and play in AI systems.

Speaker Biography:

Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology, affiliate professor of philosophy and member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Group at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an internationally recognized leader in the cognitive science of learning and development and the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed books “The Scientist in the Crib,” “The Philosophical Baby” and “The Gardener and the Carpenter.” She is a Guggenheim, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Cognitive Science Society fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and president of the Association for Psychological Science. She writes the Mind and Matter science column for The Wall Street Journal and has appeared on “The Charlie Rose Show,” “The Colbert Report,” “The Ezra Klein Show” and “Radio Lab.”

Location: Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA

Artificial intelligence (AI) has focused on a paradigm in which intelligence inheres in a single agent, and in which agents should be autonomous so they can exhibit intelligence independent of human intelligence. Thus, when AI systems are deployed in social contexts, the overall design is often naive. Such a paradigm need not be dominant. In a broader framing, agents are active and cooperative, and they wish to obtain value from participation in learning-based systems. Agents may supply data and resources to the system, only if it is in their interest. Critically, intelligence inheres as much in the system as it does in individual agents. This perspective is familiar to economics researchers, and a first goal in this work is to bring economics into contact with computer science and statistics. The long-term goal is to provide a broader conceptual foundation for emerging real-world AI systems, and to upend received wisdom in the computational, economic and inferential disciplines.

Speaker Biography:

Michael I. Jordan is the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor in the departments of electrical engineering and computer science and of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests bridge the computational, statistical, cognitive, biological and social sciences. Jordan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign member of the Royal Society. He was a plenary lecturer at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2018. He received the Ulf Grenander Prize from the American Mathematical Society in 2021, the IEEE John von Neumann Medal in 2020, the IJCAI Research Excellence Award in 2016, the David E. Rumelhart Prize from the Cognitive Science Society in 2015 and the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award in 2009.

Location: Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA

Speaker Biography:

John Schulman is a research scientist and cofounder of OpenAI. He leads the reinforcement learning (RL) team, where they are working on using RL algorithms (trial-and-error learning) to improve language models like GPT. Previously, Schulman received his PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, where he had the good fortune of being advised by Pieter Abbeel.

Prior to his recent work in RL, Schulman spent some time working on robotics, enabling robots to tie knots and plan movement using trajectory optimization. Before that, he did a brief stint in neuroscience at Berkeley before switching to machine learning, as well as studying physics at Caltech.

Location: TBD

Speaker Biography:

Pamela Samuelson is the Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law and Information at the UC Berkeley. She is recognized as a pioneer in digital copyright law, intellectual property, cyberlaw and information policy. Since 1996, she has held a joint appointment at Berkeley Law School and UC Berkeley’s School of Information. Samuelson is a director of the internationally-renowned Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. She is co-founder and chair of the board of Authors Alliance, a nonprofit organization that promotes the public interest in access to knowledge. She also serves on the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as on the advisory boards for the Electronic Privacy Information Center , the Center for Democracy & Technology, Public Knowledge, and the Berkeley Center for New Media.

Location: Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA

Speaker Biography:

Rodney Brooks is the Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus) at MIT, a robotics entrepreneur, and currently the CTO and co-founder of Robust AI. Before that he was Founder, Chairman and CTO of Rethink Robotics and Founder, former Board Member and former CTO of iRobot Corp. Dr. Brooks is the former Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT in 1984. He has published many papers in computer vision, artificial intelligence, robotics, and artificial life.

Available via livestream only

The new wave of AI systems, ChatGPT and its more powerful successors, exhibit extraordinary capabilities across a broad swath of domains. In light of this, we will discuss whether artificial INTELLIGENCE has arrived.

Speaker Biography

Sebastien Bubeck is a Senior Principal Research Manager in the Machine Learning Foundations group at Microsoft Research (MSR). He joined the Theory Group at MSR in 2014, after three years as an assistant professor at Princeton University. His works on convex optimization, online algorithms, and adversarial robustness in machine learning received several best paper awards (NeurIPS 2018 and 2021 best paper, ALT 2018 and 2023 best student paper in joint work with MSR interns, COLT 2016 best paper, and COLT 2009 best student paper). Recently he has been focused on exploring a physics-like theory of neural network learning.

Location: Banatao Auditorium, 310 Sutardja Dai Hall 2594 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA

This event is in person only.

In this one-hour webinar, Elham Tabassi, Chief of Staff in the Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), joins Brandie Nonnecke and Tejas Narechania, co-directors of the Project on Artificial Intelligence, Platforms, and Society at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, along with Jessica Newman, Research Fellow at the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity and Director, Artificial Intelligence Security Initiative, to discuss the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (RMF). Together they’ll explore ways to effectively implement the NIST AI RMF, highlight NIST’s next steps, and discuss whether the AI RMF is in alignment with AI risk mitigation strategies outlined in the EU AI Act.

Cal Performance's Illuminations: “Human and Machine,” is a compilation of events that explores the many roles technology plays in both catalyzing and challenging creative expression and human communication. Onstage performances, public programs, and conversations will engage communities on and off campus to explore how the arts, the humanities, and the sciences grapple with the influence of technology on human expression. As part of this series, Cal Performances is sponsoring a Human & Machine Song Contest where people can submit original and previously unpublished song or composition integrating AI or other technologies as a significant part of the songwriting process.

Emerging AI technology has the potential to replicate some of the processes used by artists when creating their work. Dr. Nettrice Gaskins uses AI-driven software such as deep learning to train machines to identify and process images. Her approach puts the learning bias of race to the forefront by using AI to render her artwork using different source images and image styles.

Speaker Biography

Dr. Nettrice R. Gaskins is an African American digital artist, academic, cultural critic and advocate of STEAM fields. In her work she explores "techno-vernacular creativity" and Afrofuturism.

Dr. Gaskins teaches, writes, "fabs”, and makes art using algorithms and machine learning. She has taught multimedia, visual art, and computer science with high school students. She earned a BFA in Computer Graphics with Honors from Pratt Institute in 1992 and an MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. She received a doctorate in Digital Media from Georgia Tech in 2014. Currently, Dr. Gaskins is a 2021 Ford Global Fellow and the assistant director of the Lesley STEAM Learning Lab at Lesley University. She is an advisory board member for the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech. Her first full-length book, Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation is available through The MIT Press. Gaskins' AI-generated artworks can be viewed in journals, magazines, museums, and on the Web. Her series of 'featured futurist' portraits are on view at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building through early July 2022.

Gaskins served as Board President of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (The Alliance) and was on the board of the Community Technology Centers Network (CTCNet). She is currently on the board of Artisan’s Asylum.

The CITRIS Tech Museum features projects and research from the CITRIS community including prototypes, hands-on displays, and interactive demos. Exhibit themes include energy efficiency technologies, smart devices for infrastructure and health care, and sensor systems to reduce traffic and improve fuel efficiency. The CITRIS Tech Museum offers visitors a glimpse into the future of emerging technologies and exciting new applications.