Honorary Lecture – Prof. Boi Faltings
2025-05-16 17:00 - 18:10 | CO2 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==CO%202
Professor Boi Faltings
Date: Friday 16 May 2025

Program:

17:00-17:05: Introduction by Prof. Rüdiger Urbanke, Dean of the IC School
17:05-17:50: Honorary Lecture by Prof. Boi Faltings - "A Brief History of AI (and what it might mean for the future)"
17.50-18:00: Q & A
18:00-18:10: Presentation of Honorary Diploma by Prof. Edouard Bugnion, Vice President for Innovation and Impact
18:10: Thank you and closing - Prof. Rüdiger Urbanke
18:10-19:45: Apéritif

Location: CO2

Registration: Click here

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Professor Boi Faltings

A Brief History of AI (and what it might mean for the future)

Abstract
Since its origins in the 1950s, Artificial Intelligence has repeatedly surprised the public. Early efforts up to 1980 produced game-playing programs, chatbots, and autonomous robots —but were limited by computing power. The 1980s brought a shift to practical systems like expert systems and automated planning, but hopes for higher cognitive functions faded due to the high cost of formalizing knowledge.

With digitalization, machine learning enabled automated knowledge acquisition, but ambitions remained modest—statistical learning alone couldn’t build the causal understanding needed for higher level intelligence.

Now, large language models offer a powerful new way to build vast knowledge bases and enable basic reasoning. This revives the original
goal: automating high-level cognitive tasks like planning and design, potentially at superhuman levels.

Drawing on examples from EPFL’s AI lab, I’ll reflect on the field’s evolution and explore how early dreams of AI may finally become reality.

About the speaker
Boi Faltings is a full professor of computer science at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he heads the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He has held visiting positions at NEC Research Institute, Stanford University and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has co-founded 6 companies using AI for e-commerce and computer security and acted as advisor to several others. Prof. Faltings has published over 300 refereed papers and graduated over 40 Ph.D. students, several of which have won national and international awards. He is a fellow of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence and a fellow of the Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). He holds a Diploma from ETH Zurich and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
