AI Center Seminar - AI Fundamentals series - Prof. Risto Miikkulainen

The talk is jointly organized by the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the EPFL AI Center.

Hosting professor: Prof. Boi Faltings

The talk will be followed by a coffee session. 

Title
Decision-Making: A Touchstone for AI Agents

Abstract
While Generative AI allows conversing with AI agents, and deep learning makes it possible to predict outcomes, effective decision-making is still an open challenge for AI. Multiple technologies may turn out useful: neuroevolution and surrogate modeling can discover creative solutions that would otherwise be missed; semantic density and rule-set representations can estimate confidence and make decisions explainable; coordination frameworks can leverage dynamic interactions in multiagent networks. I will review several such technologies and give examples in agriculture, healthcare, and design.

Bio
Risto Miikkulainen is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin and a VP of AI Research Cognizant AI Labs. He received an M.S. in Engineering from Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA in 1990.  His current research focuses on methods and applications of AI in decision-making, particularly those based on neuroevolution and generative AI, as well as neural network models of natural language processing and vision; he is an author of over 500 articles in these research areas. At Cognizant, and previously as a CTO of Sentient Technologies, he is scaling up these approaches to real-world problems. Risto is an AAAI, IEEE, and INNS Fellow; his work on neuroevolution has recently been recognized with the IEEE CIS Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award, the Gabor Award of the International Neural Network Society, and Outstanding Paper of the Decade Award of the International Society for Artificial Life.