Edmond Awad
MIT
Invited speaker, Feb. 2nd, 9:00am-10:00am
Edmond Awad is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Scalable Cooperation group led by Iyad Rahwan at MIT Media Lab. Born and raised in Syria, Edmond received his bachelor degree (2007) from Tishreen University (Syria) in Informatics Engineering. In 2009, he moved to UAE where at Masdar Institute, he completed a master’s degree (2011) in Computing and Information Science with a research topic in Multi-agent Systems, before completing a PhD (2015) in Argumentation and Multi-agent systems. In 2015, Edmond joined the Scalable Cooperation group at MIT Media Lab as a graduate student and a research assistant. During his second master’s degree, Edmond co-developed Moral Machine, a website that gather human decisions on moral dilemmas faced by driverless cars. The website has been visited by over 3 million users, who contributed their judgements on 40 million dilemmas. Edmond’s work has been covered in major media outlets like The Times, LA Times, Der Spiegel (DE), and El Pais (ES). Edmond’s research interest are in the areas of AI, Ethics, Computational Social Science and Multi-agent Systems.
Paula Boddington
Oxford University
Panelist for panel 1, Feb1st 6pm Tulane University
Paula Boddington has been working in the Department of Computer Science at Oxford University on a project investigating the possibilities of developing codes of ethics for artificial intelligence, where she has been funded by the Future of Life Institute. She is a philosopher by background, and has worked extensively on questions in applied philosophy, including medical ethics and ethical questions in genetics and genomics. Her book “Towards a Code of Ethics for Artificial Intelligence” was published in December 2017.
Jason Furman
Harvard University
Panelist for panel 1, Feb1st 6pm Tulane University
Jason Furman is Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). He is also nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. This followed eight years as a top economic adviser to President Obama, including serving as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017, acting as both President Obama’s chief economist and a member of the cabinet. During this time Furman played a major role in most of the major economic policies of the Obama Administration. Previously Furman held a variety of posts in public policy and research. In public policy, Furman worked at both the Council of Economic Advisers and National Economic Council during the Clinton administration and also at the World Bank. In research, Furman was a Director of the Hamilton Project and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and also has served in visiting positions at various universities, including NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Policy. Furman has conducted research in a wide range of areas, including fiscal policy, tax policy, health economics, Social Security, technology policy, and domestic and international macroeconomics. In addition to articles in scholarly journals and periodicals, Furman is the editor of two books on economic policy. Furman holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
Takashi Egawa
NEC Corporation
Panelist for panel 2, Feb. 2nd, 2018, 5:30pm
Takashi Egawa is an expert of standardization, in particular telecommunication technology and AI/S. He contributed to the standardization of Next Generation Network, disaster telecommunication, and Future Networks as the chair of Focus Group on Future Networks, the chair of Joint Coordination Activity of Software Defined Networks (SDN), the Rapporteur of SDN, and others in ITU-T. He is now working in NEC Corporation and is responsible for the standardization of AI/S, in particular Ethical, Legal, Social Issues (ELSI) of AI/S. In IEEE, he serves as the secretary of IEEE P7001 (Transparency of Autonomous Systems).
Simson Garfinkel
ACM U.S. Public Policy Council
Panelist for panel 2, Feb.2nd, 2018 , 5:30pm
Simson L. Garfinkel is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Public Policy Council and the co-chair of Council’s Ad Hoc Working Group on Algorithms. His current research interests include privacy in big data, cybersecurity and usability. He holds seven US patents and has published dozens of research articles in computer security and digital forensics. He is an ACM Fellow and a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
John C. Havens
IEEE
Panelist for panel 2, Feb.2nd, 2018 , 5:30pm
John C. Havens is Executive Director of The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems that has two outputs – the creation and iteration of Ethically Aligned Design: A Vision for Prioritizing Human Well-being with Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and the identification and recommendation of ideas for Standards Projects focused on prioritizing ethical considerations in AI/AS. Currently there are thirteen approved Standards Working Groups in the IEEE P7000™ series.
John is also author of: Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Our Humanity To Maximize Machines and Hacking Happiness: Why Your Personal Data Counts and How Tracking it Can Change the World.
Patrick Lin
California Polytechnic State University
Invited speaker, Feb. 3rd, 4:30pm-5:30pm
Patrick Lin, PhD, is the director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group, based at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he is a philosophy professor. Current affiliations include Stanford Law School, Notre Dame, World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on AI and Robotics, and the 100-Year Study on AI. Previous affiliations include Stanford Engineering, US Naval Academy, Dartmouth College, and UNIDIR. He is well published in technology ethics, with five books that include Robot Ethics (MIT Press, 2012) and Robot Ethics 2.0 (Oxford University Press, 2017), as well as several funded policy reports on military robotics, cyberwarfare, and enhanced warfighters. Dr. Lin regularly gives invited briefings to industry, media, and governments worldwide; and he teaches courses in ethics, technology, and law.
The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi
MIT
Invited speaker, Feb.3rd, 5:30pm
The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi is an innovative thinker, philosopher, educator and a polymath monk. He is Director of the Ethics Initiative at the MIT Media Lab and President & CEO of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a center dedicated to inquiry, dialogue, and education on the ethical and humane dimensions of life. The Center is a collaborative and nonpartisan think tank, and its programs emphasize responsibility and examine meaningfulness and moral purpose between individuals, organizations, and societies. Six Nobel Peace Laureates serve as The Center’s founding members and its programs run in several countries and are expanding. Venerable Tenzin’s unusual background encompasses entering a Buddhist monastery at the age of ten and receiving graduate education at Harvard University with degrees ranging from Philosophy to Physics to International Relations. He is a Tribeca Disruptive Fellow and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Venerable Tenzin serves on the boards of number of academic, humanitarian, and religious organizations. He is the recipient of several recognitions and awards, and received Harvard’s Distinguished Alumni Honors for his visionary contributions to humanity.
Iyad Rahwan
MIT
Invited speaker, Feb. 2nd, 9:00am-10:00am
Iyad Rahwan is the AT&T Career Development Professor and an Associate Professor of Media Arts & Sciences at the MIT Media Lab, where he leads the Scalable Cooperation group. A native of Aleppo, Syria, Rahwan holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and is an affiliate faculty at the MIT Institute of Data, Systems and Society (IDSS). Rahwan’s work lies at the intersection of the computer and social sciences, with a focus on collective intelligence, large-scale cooperation, and the social aspects of Artificial Intelligence. He led the winning team in the US State Department’s Tag Challenge, using social media to locate individuals in remote cities within 12 hours using only their mug shots. Recently, he crowdsourced 40 million decisions from people worldwide about the ethics of AI systems. Rahwan’s work appeared in major academic journals, including Science and PNAS, and features regularly in major media outlets, including the New York Times, The Economist, and the Wall Street Journal.
Annette Reilly
IEEE
Panelist for panel 2, Feb.2nd, 2018 , 5:30pm
Annette Reilly, Ph.D., IEEE Senior Life Member and IEEE Computer Society Golden Core, ACM Life Member, CSDP, CSEP-ACQ and INCOSE member, PMP, and STC Fellow, has led the development and harmonization of IEEE and ISO/IEC standards for systems and software engineering and information management for over 30 years. She retired from a 31-year career at Lockheed Martin, where she held a variety of responsibilities for proposal management, engineering management, systems engineering, information management, and technical documentation. Dr. Reilly received a B.A. from Rice University, M.A. and Ph.D. from Brandeis University, and an MIS from The George Washington University.
Carol Rose
ACLU
Invited speaker, Feb. 2nd, 4:30pm-5:30pm
Carol Rose is the Executive Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts (www.aclum.org), a nonpartisan organization with over 85,000 members and supporters in Massachusetts (alongside more than 1.6 million ACLU members nationwide) that integrates litigation, legislation, traditional and social media, and community-based movement-building to promote civil rights and defend civil liberties. A journalist and lawyer, Rose in 2013 launched the ACLU of Massachusetts’ “Technology for Liberty & Justice for All” initiative, a $7-milllion program focused on the civil liberties implications and civil rights promise of new technology, developed in combination with a movement-building approach to law reform. Rose is a frequent speaker on technology and civil liberties issues, including the 2014 White House conference on big data privacy at MIT and the 2016 Forum on Data Privacy hosted by the Internet Policy Research Initiative at MIT. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence. She is a graduate of Stanford University (BSc 1983), the London School of Economics (MSc 1985), and Harvard Law School (JD 1996).
Peter Stone
UT Austin
Panelist for panel 1, Feb1st 6pm, Tulane University.
Dr. Peter Stone is the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor and Associate Chair of Computer Science, as well as Chair of the Robotics Portfolio Program, at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2013 he was awarded the University of Texas System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award and in 2014 he was inducted into the UT Austin Academy of Distinguished Teachers, earning him the title of University Distinguished Teaching Professor. Professor Stone’s research interests in Artificial Intelligence include machine learning (especially reinforcement learning), multiagent systems, robotics, and e-commerce. Professor Stone received his Ph.D in Computer Science in 1998 from Carnegie Mellon University. From 1999 to 2002 he was a Senior Technical Staff Member in the Artificial Intelligence Principles Research Department at AT&T Labs – Research. He is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, AAAI Fellow, IEEE Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, and 2004 ONR Young Investigator. In 2003, he won an NSF CAREER award for his proposed long term research on learning agents in dynamic, collaborative, and adversarial multiagent environments, in 2007 he received the prestigious IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, given biannually to the top AI researcher under the age of 35, and in 2016 he was awarded the ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award. Professor Stone co-founded Cogitai, Inc., a startup company focussed on continual learning, in 2015, and currently serves as President and COO.
Wendell Wallach
Yale University
Panelist for panel 1, Feb1st 6pm Tulane University.
Wendell Wallach is senior advisor to The Hastings Center. He is also a scholar, consultant, and author at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, where he has chaired Technology and Ethics studies for the past eleven years. His latest book, a primer on emerging technologies, is entitled, A Dangerous Master: How to keep technology from slipping beyond our control. In addition, he co-authored (with Colin Allen) Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong. He received the World Technology Award for Ethics in 2014 and for Journalism and Media in 2015, as well as a Fulbright Research Chair at the University of Ottawa in 2015-2016. The World Economic Forum appointed Mr. Wallach co-chair of its Global Future Council on Technology, Values, and Policy for the 2016-2018 term.