Participants
Bill Blakemore became a reporter for ABC News 46 years ago, covering a wide variety of stories. He spearheaded ABC’s coverage of global warming, traveling from the tropics to polar regions to report on its impacts, dangers, and possible remedies.
Read MoreRichard Besser is ABC News’ chief health and medical editor. In this role, he provides medical analysis and commentary for all ABC News broadcasts and platforms, including World News with David Muir, Good Morning America, and Nightline.
Read MoreJill Tarter has devoted her career to hunting for signs of sentient beings elsewhere through a systematic search for radio signals from Earth’s galactic neighbors. She has received wide recognition in the scientific community, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Aerospace, two Public Service Medals from NASA and a 2009 TEDPrize.
Read MoreLuciano Floridi is one of Italy’s most influential thinkers in the area of philosophy science, technology, and ethics, and is best known as the founder of two major areas of research, Information Ethics and the Philosophy of Information. Dr. Floridi is the first philosopher elected Gauss Professor by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences.
Read MoreMarvin Minsky is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence and had made numerous contributions to the fields of AI, cognitive science, mathematics and robotics. His current work focuses on trying to imbue machines with a capacity for common sense.
Read MoreSeth Shostak is an astronomer, lecturer and the author and editor of several books, including the 2009 Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (National Geographic). For much of his career, he conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies.
Read MoreNick Bostrom is a co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association and Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. His research areas of interest include artificial intelligence, bio-enhancement, and mind uploading.
Read MoreNicola Clayton is professor Comparative Cognition in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Clare College. Clayton’s work in integrating biology and psychology led to a re-evaluation of the cognitive capacities of animals, particularly birds, resulting in a theory that intelligence evolved independently in at least two disparate groups, apes and corvids.
Read MoreDescribed by Time Magazine as “perhaps the ultimate role model for women in science,” the Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D., has served as the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute since 1999.
Read MoreHod Lipson is a roboticist who works in the areas of artificial intelligence and digital manufacturing. An award-winning researcher, teacher, and communicator, Lipson enjoys sharing the beauty of robotics though his books, essays, public lectures, and radio and television appearances.
Read MoreKevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading in England. Warwick works in robotics and artificial intelligence and recently designed an intelligent deep brain stimulator to treat Parkinson’s Disease. Best known for his pioneering research with implants, including experimentation on himself which led to him being called the ‘World’s First Cyborg.’
Read MoreA managing partner at the consulting firm, Haseltine Partners, Eric Haseltine is a neuroscientist who has applied new discoveries about the human brain in fields as diverse as aerospace technology, virtual reality, special effects, journalism, entertainment and, most recently, national security and intelligence.
Read MorePresident of the Future of Life Institute, Max Tegmark advocates for positive use of technology. He is also a professor doing physics and AI research at MIT.
Read MoreRecognized mathematician and computer scientist Brian Snow’s early work spans from teaching mathematics and laying the groundwork for a computer science department at Ohio University in the 1960’s, to working as a cryptologic designer and architect at the National Security Agency (NSA) in the 1970s.
Read MoreGerd Gigerenzer is director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. He has trained U.S. Federal Judges, physicians, and top managers in decision-making and understanding risks and uncertainties.
Read MoreJosh Tenenbaum is a professor of Computational Cognitive Science in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He studies learning, reasoning, and perception in humans and machines.
Read MoreJürgen Schmidhuber has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers. His lab’s research on artificial neural nets won several handwriting recognition contests and number one rankings in several computer vision competitions and benchmarks.
Read MoreKnown as the “Math Guy” on National Public Radio and author of 30 books and over 80 published research articles, Keith Devlin is a recognized mathematician. In 2003, he was lauded by the California State Assembly for his “innovative work and longtime service in the field of mathematics and its relation to logic and linguistics.”
Read MoreRex Jung is a leading scientist in the emerging field of positive neuroscience, the study of what the brain does well. His groundbreaking research led to the first model describing a network of brain regions critically linked in the service of intellectual pursuits, known as the Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (or “P-FIT”).
Read MoreRecently retired from his position as Panasonic Professor of Robotics at MIT, Rodney Brooks’ latest startup, Heartland Robotics, aims to revitalize American manufacturing by providing workers with new robotic tools. During his employment at MIT, Brooks served as director of the institution’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and its Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory—MIT’s largest lab.
Read MoreMatthew Wilson is Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience and Picower Scholar at MIT. His lab is interested in teasing apart the mechanisms of sleep and arousal, and applications of neuroscience in engineering and the study of intelligence.
Read MoreGary Marcus, scientist, bestselling author, and entrepreneur, is Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU and CEO and Co-Founder of the recently-formed Geometric Intelligence, Inc.
Read MoreKeith Oatley has spent the last twenty years researching the psychology of reading and writing fiction, as both a scientist and the author of three novels.
Read MoreMaja Matarić is at the forefront of the growing field of “socially assistive” robotics, building intelligent machines that can interact with humans socially, rather than physically, to help them learn new skills or recover from illness and injury.
Read MoreJohn Donvan was just named a 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his bestselling book, In a Different Key: The Story of Autism, published in 2016 by Crown Books. He is also host of the Intelligence Squared U.S. Debates, which are heard on public radio and by podcast.
Read MoreOrrin Devinsky is professor of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry at NYU Langone School of Medicine. He directs the NYU Epilepsy Center and St. Barnabas Institute of Neurology.
Read MoreMurray Campbell is a research scientist at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. He was a member of the team that developed Deep Blue, the first computer to defeat the human world chess champion in a match.
Read MoreMurray Shanahan is a professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London. In the 1980s, he studied computer science as an undergraduate at Imperial College, and then obtained his Ph.D. from Cambridge University (King’s College).
Read MorePeter Staley has been a long-term AIDS and gay rights activist, first as a member of ACT UP New York, then as the founding director of TAG, the Treatment Action Group. He served on the board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) for 13 years.
Read MoreGregory Wheeler is an American logician, philosopher, and computer scientist, who specializes in formal epistemology. Much of his work has focused on imprecise probability.
Read MoreAndrew W. Lo is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the director of MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering, a principal investigator at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and an affiliated faculty member of the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Read MoreMasoud Mohseni is a senior research scientist at Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he develops machine-learning algorithms that fundamentally rely on quantum dynamics.
Read MoreRichard J. Haier is professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. Haier is also the associate editor of the Intelligence journal and the president-elect of the International Society for Intelligence Research.
Read MoreAs a theoretical physicist at the University of Pennsylvania, Vijay Balasubramanian pursues research in two different fields: string theory and theoretical neuroscience. He is an expert in statistical inference and “Occam’s Razor”—the trade-off between simple and accurate mathematical models.
Read MoreRadu Sion is a professor at Stony Brook University (on leave), the director of the National Security Institute, and the CEO of Private Machines Inc. Sion’s research is in cyber security and large-scale computing. He has published 85-plus peer-reviewed works in top venues and has organized 65-plus conferences.
Read MoreScott Barry Kaufman is scientific director of the Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He conducts research on the measurement and development of imagination, creativity, and play.
Read MoreRush D. Holt, is the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. Before coming to AAAS, Holt served for 16 years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Read MoreTimo Andres is a composer and pianist who studied at Yale University. A Nonesuch Records artist, his album, Home Stretch, has been hailed by The Guardian for its “playful intelligence and individuality.” Notable works include Strong Language, a string quartet for the Takacs Quartet, and The Blind Banister, a piano concerto for Jonathan Biss and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, which was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize Finalist.
Read MoreClaudia Perlich leads the machine learning efforts that power Dstillery’s digital intelligence for marketers and media companies. With more than 50 published scientific articles, she is a widely acclaimed expert on big data and machine learning applications, and an active speaker at data science and marketing conferences around the world.
Read MoreJesse Engel is a research scientist with Google Brain’s Magenta team on the coevolution of artificial intelligence algorithms and their creative applications. He received his Bachelors, Ph.D., and Postdoc degree from UC Berkeley.
Read MoreLav Varshney is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science (by courtesy), and a research affiliate in the Beckman Institute and in the Neuroscience Program, all at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Read MoreVasant Dhar is a Professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and the Center for Data Science, and Editor-in-Chief of the Big Data journal. He is also the founder of SCT Capital Management, a machine learning based investment entity in New York City that implements a systematic process of knowledge discovery to make trading decisions autonomously.
Read MoreGregory Mone is a novelist, science journalist, and speaker who has written several books for children including Fish and Dangerous Waters. As a magazine writer, he has covered artificial intelligence, robots, physics, and biology.
Read MoreKathryn Hume is VP Product & Strategy for integrate.ai, a Toronto-based startup that helps large enterprises reinvent customer experiences using artificial intelligence. Prior to joining integrate.ai, Hume was President of Fast Forward Labs.
Read MoreTim Hwang is director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, a philanthropic project working to ensure that machine learning and autonomous technologies are researched, developed, and deployed in the public interest.
Read MoreAviv Ovadya is Chief Technologist at the Center for Social Media Responsibility at the University of Michigan School of Information, where he works on ensuring our information ecosystem has a positive impact on society. This involves identifying, measuring, and mitigating indirect harms of technologies that affect public discourse. Ovadya received his bachelors and masters degrees in computer science at MIT.
Read MoreMeredith Whittaker is co-founder of the AI Now Institute, a leading university institute dedicated to researching the social implications of artificial intelligence and related technologies in an interdisciplinary context.
Read MoreDr. Bhavna Agrawal, a leading researcher at IBM, is bringing education and artificial intelligence technology together to help solve various problems in elementary and higher education. Some of her latest work involved working with automatic recognition of children’s speech.
Read MoreTimnit Gebru works in the Fairness Accountability Transparency and Ethics (FATE) group at Microsoft Research, New York. She is currently studying the ethical considerations underlying any data mining project, and methods of auditing and mitigating bias in sociotechnical systems.
Read MoreKathryn Denning is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at York University in Toronto. Her research includes projects on the social impacts of astrobiology and SETI, the evolution of intelligence, and contemporary ideas concerning the colonization of space.
Read MoreJaron Lanier is the Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft, where he helps lead the company’s development and implementation of artificial intelligence systems. A leading computer scientist, he is renowned his …
Read MoreSolon Barocas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University. His current research explores ethical and policy issues in artificial intelligence, particularly fairness in machine learning, methods for bringing accountability to automated decision-making, and the privacy implications of inference.
Read MoreMeredith Broussard is an assistant professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University, an affiliate faculty member at the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment at the NYU Center for Data Science, and a 2019 fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute.
Read MoreFlorian Pinel is a Senior Technical Staff Member and Master Inventor in the Watson Content and IoT group at IBM. He is the co-inventor of IBM Chef Watson, an application that uses machine learning and natural language processing to demonstrate computational creativity and suggest original recipe ideas.
Read MoreTim Urban is the Writer, Illustrator, and Co-Founder of Wait But Why, a long-form, stick-figure-illustrated website with over 600,000 subscribers and a monthly average of one million visitors. He has produced dozens of viral articles on a wide range of topics, from artificial intelligence to social anxiety to humans becoming a multi-planetary species.
Read MoreJessica Brillhart is an Immersive Director, Writer, and Theorist. She’s the founder of the independent studio, Vrai Pictures, and is on the roster for Mssng Peces. Previously, Brillhart was the Principal Filmmaker for VR at Google where she worked with engineers to develop Google Jump.
Read MoreDr. Isabel Pedersen is Canada Research Chair in Digital Life, Media and Culture and an associate professor at Ontario Tech University. She founded Decimal Lab, a digital culture and media lab that concentrates on the social implications of emerging technology.
Read MoreShannon Vallor is the Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Santa Clara University. She is also a Visiting Researcher and AI Ethicist at Google, and a former President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.
Read MoreDonald Hoffman received his PhD from MIT and is a professor of cognitive science at the University of California Irvine. He is an author of over 120 scientific papers and three books, including Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See.
Read MoreSimon Garnier is an associate professor in the Federated Department of Biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers-Newark. He is the head of the Swarm Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab that studies the mechanisms underlying collective behaviors and swarm intelligence in natural and artificial systems.
Read MoreGarry Kasparov is widely regarded as the greatest chessplayer in history, becoming the youngest world champion ever at 22 in 1985. His matches against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue were a landmark for AI, making headlines around the world.
Read MoreConstance “Connie” Lehman, MD–PhD, is professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, and chief of Breast Imaging and co-director of the Avon Comprehensive Breast Evaluation Center at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She is a pioneer in the domain of Artificial Intelligence implementation in clinical medical practice.
Read MoreMonica Gagliano is a research associate professor in evolutionary ecology. She is based at the University of Sydney as a Research Affiliate at the Sydney Environment Institute and a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences.
Read MoreLily Xu is a PhD student studying computer science at the University of Southern California. She is part of the USC Center for AI in Society (CAIS), which aims to leverage artificial intelligence to address issues in conservation, public health, and public security.
Read MoreVictor Vescovo is the first person to dive “The Five Deeps” – the deepest point in all five of the world’s oceans. He is the first person to dive the …
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Sébastien Bubeck is a Partner Research Manager at Microsoft Research (MSR). He won multiple awards for his machine learning results around robustness and optimization. Most recently, he has been interested …
Read MoreBenjamín Labatut is a Chilean author born in the Netherlands in 1980. He is the author of The Maniac, a fictionalized biography of the polymath John von Neumann which explores …
Read MoreDaphne Koller is CEO and founder of Insitro, a machine learning-driven drug discovery and development company transforming the way drugs are discovered and delivered to patients. She was the co-founder, …
Read MoreYoshua Bengio is recognized worldwide as one of the leading experts in artificial intelligence, most known for his pioneering work in deep learning, earning him the 2018 A.M. Turing Award, …
Read MoreJustine Bateman is a director, writer, producer, and author. She is also an Emmy and Golden Globe nominated actor. She holds a degree in computer science and digital media management …
Read MoreRufin VanRullen is a cognitive neuroscientist and AI scientist based in Toulouse (France). He is a CNRS Research Director and holds a Research Chair at the Artificial and Natural Intelligence …
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