Summary: AI as a science has devoted much effort to exploring tasks that we as humans find difficult. With each new discovery and new paradigm that extends our frontiers, however, we discover that it is the seemingly simpler tasks that turn out to require the most in intelligence, creativity and abstraction. Based on a historic and personal perspective on AI’s progress so far, I will discuss today’s exciting advances, but also characterize the remaining (overlooked) problems for a next generation Robotic AI. We will also examine structural requirements needed to be successful in this new industrial revolution. Is Europe suitably positioned to lead the charge? Like our notions of “intelligence”, our definitions of societal structures and recipes to respond should be carefully reexamined and thoughtfully revised.
Bio: Dr. Alexander Waibel is Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany). He is director of the International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies. Waibel is internationally known for his work on AI, Machine Learning, Multimodal Interfaces and Speech Translation Systems. He and his team developed the TDNN, the first shift-invariant “Convolutional” Neural Network, early multimodal interfaces and the first deployed speech translation and interpreting systems. Waibel is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Germany and a Fellow of the IEEE. He received BS, MS and PhD degrees from MIT and CMU, respectively.
