AISAFETY - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
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- Member of the ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Job Titles:
- Member of the PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
Job Titles:
- Member of the PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
Gopal Sarma MD, PhD is on the leadership team of the Models, Inference, and Algorithms Initiative at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, serving as a full-time scientific advisor. In addition to his formal scientific training in mathematics, theoretical physics, and medicine, he has worked as a professional software engineer for Wolfram Research, where he managed a 10-15 person data curation team and built a foundational framework for natural language processing in the Wolfram Language. He is also a Senior Contributor to the OpenWorm Foundation, an international open science project working towards the world's first realistic biophysical simulation of the nematode C. elegans. With OpenWorm, he has led a diverse set of projects spanning software testing and quality assurance, ion channel modeling, and organizational development. He has published on a variety of topics related to AI safety, including value alignment and goal structure stability, safe oracles for mathematical computation, and biologically-inspired research agendas with parallel tracks aimed at AI and AI safety. He received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Harvard University, PhD in applied physics from Stanford University, and MD from the Emory University School of Medicine.
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- Senior Research Scientist at Uber AI
Joel Lehman is a senior research scientist at Uber AI, where he leads the lab's AI safety research efforts. Previously, he was the first employee of Geometric Intelligence (acquired by Uber) and a tenure-track professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, where his research focused on evolutionary computation, neural networks, artificial life, and computational creativity. He was co-inventor of the popular novelty search evolutionary algorithm, and co-wrote a popular science book (featured in Harvard Business Review and 538) on what search algorithms such as novelty search imply for individual and societal accomplishment.
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- Professor of Social and Ethical Artificial Intelligence at Umeå University
Virginia Dignum is Professor of Social and Ethical Artificial Intelligence at Umeå University, Sweden and associated with the TU Delft in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the ethical and societal impact of AI. She is a Fellow of the European Artificial Intelligence Association (EURAI), a member of the European Commission High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, of the World Economic Forum's Global Artificial Intelligence Council, of the Executive Committee of the IEEE Initiative on Ethically Aligned Design, and a founding member of ALLAI-NL, the Dutch AI Alliance.
She has a PHD in Artificial Intelligence from Utrecht University and in 2006 she was awarded the prestigious Veni grant by the NWO (Dutch Organization for Scientific Research). She a well-known speaker on the social and ethical impacts of Artificial Intelligence, is member of the reviewing boards for all major journals and conferences in AI and has published over 180 peer-reviewed papers.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Member of the ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Dr. Xiaowei Huang is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool. His research is concerned with the development of automated verification techniques that ensure the correctness and reliability of intelligent systems. He is leading the research direction on the verification and validation of deep neural networks. He has published 50+ papers, most of which appear in top conferences and journals of Artificial Intelligence, Formal Verification, and Software Engineering. He has given invited talks at several leading conferences, discussing topics related to the safety and security of applying machine learning algorithms to critical applications. He and is PI of two Dstl (Ministry of Defence, UK) projects on Test Metrics for Artificial Intelligence and co-I of EPSRC ORCA (Offshore Robotics for Certification of Asset) Hub.
Job Titles:
- Member of the ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Job Titles:
- Member of the PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
- NASA Ames Research Center, USA
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- Senior Research Fellow at Tencent Research Institute
Jeff Cao is a senior research fellow at Tencent Research Institute, where he researches AI governance and ethics, regulation of autonomous driving system and other emerging technologies, legal tech and digital justice, platform governance, data governance, and digital IP. He gets a master's degree in intellectual property law from Southwest University of Political Science and Law (SWUPL). He is also an expert at Internet Society of China, a part-time researcher at East China University of Political Science and Law, and a member of National AI Standardization Group. He has published dozens of articles on the internet, in the newspaper, and in academic journals; and his published articles include On Civil Liability of Artificial Intelligence, Ten Big Trends of Legal AI, and How to Deal with Ethical Problems of AI. His experience in China's internet industry, his contact with policy makers, and his connection with academia help him see the many issues around the internet and other emerging technologies from a holistic and systematic way.
Job Titles:
- Member of the PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
Job Titles:
- Member of the PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
Job Titles:
- Member of the PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
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- Arquimea Research Center, Spain
Raja Chatila, IEEE Fellow, is Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Ethics at Sorbonne Université in Paris. He is director of the SMART Laboratory of Excellence on Human-Machine Interactions and former director of the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics.
He contributed in several areas of Artificial Intelligence and autonomous and interactive Robotics along his career and is author of about 160 publications. He is recipient of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Pioneer Award.
He is chair of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, member of the High-Level Expert Group on AI with the European Commission, and member of the Commission on the Ethics of Research in Digital Science and Technology (CERNA) in France.
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- Director of AI Projects at the Future of Life Institute
Richard Mallah is Director of AI Projects at the Future of Life Institute, an NGO where he works to support the robust, safe, beneficent development and deployment of advanced artificial intelligence. He helps move the world toward existential hope and away from outsized risks via meta-research, analysis, research organization, community building, and advocacy, and with respect to technical AI safety, strategy, and policy coordination. Richard was in FLI's core from its very start; among his myriad activities at the Future of Life Institute, Richard was the lead author of FLI's landmark Landscape of Technical AI Safety Research, he has given dozens of invited talks on the safety, ethics, robustness, and beneficence of advanced AI, has co-organized conferences and workshops, and formally peer reviews papers on the topic.
Mr. Mallah also serves on the Executive Committee of IEEE's initiative on autonomous systems ethics, co-chairs that initiative's AGI committee, and is a member of its wellbeing and LAWS committees. At Partnership on AI, Richard serves on its safety-critical AI and labor & economy working groups. He also serves as a senior advisor to the AI initiative of The Future Society, organizers of the World Government Summit.
Richard has had over eighteen years of experience in AI R&D leadership in industry, lending an appreciation for tradeoffs at all AI product lifecycle stages. He also has experience in risk management. Richard holds a degree in computer science with a specialization in AI from Columbia University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
Job Titles:
- Member of the ORGANIZING COMMITTEE