I am thrilled to share that I am reporting from Heidelberg, Germany this week where I am attending the 11th Heidelberg Laureate Forum as a member of the press. The forum brings together young researchers across mathematics and computing disciplines, and distinguished Laureates that have won significant awards in the fields, to network and learn from one another. The program consists of panels, workshops, lightning discussions, poster sessions, networking opportunities, and more in the beautiful old town of Heidelberg. As a member of the press, I have the opportunity to represent CCC in interviews with many of the incredible laureates, and listen in on groundbreaking lectures and discussions about pressing topics in computing.
Today is Day 2 of the Forum, and yesterday the behind-the-scenes opportunities for the journalists kicked off with three separate press conferences with the following laureates:
- Dr. Vint Cerf: Dr. Cerf is considered one of the “fathers of the Internet” due to his groundbreaking work on internetworking, including the creation of the Internet’s basic communications protocols, TCP/IP, and his leadership in the networking research community.
- Dr. Alexei Efros: Dr. Efros has achieved significant impact in the field of computer vision, specifically data-driven computer vision, computer graphics, vision-based robotics, and computational photography.
- Dr. Patrick M. Hanrahan: Dr. Hanrahan is a pioneer in 3D computer graphics and data visualization, and has used his background in biophysics to render algorithms that produce realistic movement in films, video games, and other applications.
Throughout these invigorating conversations, a couple of main points about computing in today’s world emerged:
- Interdisciplinarity is key.
- Dr. Cerf: “I think companies like mine [Google] and others that are working with these very powerful technologies need to have those sorts of people, anthropologists, psychologists, neuroscientists and so on, to help us understand how those tools interact with people and what they might do to them or do for them. And I don’t think we’ve invested enough in that kind of melding together of the multiple sciences. This is sort of a scientific version of multi stakeholder policy making, and I’m a big fan of drawing on those disciplines in order to understand better how the tools could be used and might be abused or might fail to serve the people who are trying to use them. So I’m a big fan of trying to add to the family.”
- Dr. Hanrahan: “It’s just a really great thing in my career, that I was able to work alongside artists and designers… We were 50/50… now, it’s actually like only 10-20% technology [experts], but it started out being pretty even. And the artists told us what they wanted. They told us, we want to be able to make realistic faces or realistic motion or anger that are exaggerated. They didn’t want just pure physics… they call it cartoon physics. It’s just a really great thing in my career, [that I] was able to work alongside artists, and Pixar did a lot of things [to encourage collaboration]… people think those two worlds are a little bit separate–the art world vs. the science world. And I think that people share a lot of things in common.”
- Technology evolves.
- Dr. Efros: “Science is not about what you should do. Science is about trying to figure out what’s true right now, but willing to change your mind when the facts change. It’s not something that’s a solid fact that’s going to be there forever and ever, like half of science is going to be debunked…the fundamental truth about science is that nothing is settled. Everything could be revisited if there is new data.”
- Dr. Cerf: “I’m very impressed by some of the things these [AI systems] can do, and that’s why people get excited. But at the same time, as I have already said, there are weaknesses that we need to address. So we just need to understand how our tools work. And this would be true, just to use an analogy, if you’re using very powerful and complex woodworking tools, you want to understand exactly how they work so you don’t accidentally cut your finger off. And that’s what we have to work against with the current AI world.”
Stay tuned for more insights from the 11th Heidelberg Laureate Forum!
