People, Computation, and Intelligence

Eric Horvitz, Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group,
Microsoft Research, Redmond

1600, Wednesday, 7 November 2007
Lecture Theatre 2, Appleton Tower,
11 Crichton Street, Edinburgh

Abstract Technical and infrastructural developments are coming together to provide a nurturing environment for creating, studying, and fielding valuable machine learning and reasoning systems. Numerous efforts have been stimulated by the increasing availability of data for studies in learning and adaptation. The data-rich environment poses interesting new challenges and opportunities, and frames new theoretical and practical work. I will present several illustrative research efforts that highlight challenges and directions with the streaming of machine intelligence into the daily lives of people. I will focus thematically on opportunities for harnessing machine learning and reasoning to better understand and support people, and the critical role of methods for representing and reasoning about human intentions, preferences, and initiative.

Biography Eric is a Principal Researcher and Research Area Manager at Microsoft Research. His interests span core challenges in machine reasoning and learning, search and information retrieval, and human-computer interaction. He has served as Associate Editor of the Journal of the ACM, as Chair of the Association for Uncertainty and Artificial Intelligence (AUAI), and on the DARPA Information Science and Technology Study Group (ISAT). He has been elected Councilor and Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and is currently serving as President of the organization. He received his PhD and MD degrees at Stanford University.