Hod Lipson is a roboticist and author who works in the areas of robotics and artificial intelligence. He and his students love designing and building robots that do what you’d least expect robots to do: Self replicate, self-reflect, ask questions, and even be creative.
An award-winning researcher, teacher, and author, Lipson enjoys sharing the beauty of robotics though his books, essays, public lectures, and radio and television appearances. Hod is a professor of Mechanical Engineering and Data Science at Columbia University, where he directs the Creative Machines Lab, which pioneers new ways to make machines that create, and machines that are creative.
Hod Lipson is a frequent keynoter in both industry and academic events. He speaks about artificial intelligence and robotics, and their implications across sectors ranging from retail to finance, and from art to architecture. Clients include Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, Moody, PWC, Google, Exxon, Baidu, Tencent, Citibank, Credit Swiss, Deutsche Telekom, and many others. He also speaks at non-profits such as TED, National Academies, ACM and others.
Sample Topics
Demystifying ChatGPT – How generative AI really works and how it can be used in business
Generative-AI tool ChatGPT and its cousins, like BingChat and Dall-E, are just the beginning of what will be a new era of ever-improving creative AI. While human creativity has remained relatively constant over generations, AI will continue to improve every year. Whatever your bar is for quality, accuracy, and creativity — that bar will be crossed eventually. The question is how to harness the power of these tools for good, while understanding and mitigating their limitations. We will take a deep dive into generative AI, both language models as well as visual models (like StableDiffusion). We will understand how they work, how a machine can be truly “creative”, and how businesses are using this technology to advance their mission (there are two key approaches). If knowledge is all about standing on the shoulders of giants, then these are the ultimate shoulders to stand on.
The Six Waves of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics technology have been making grand strides over the past few years, outperforming humans in tasks once thought to be impossible. Machines can now recognize images, interpret audio and understand language with unprecedented reliability. Cars can drive themselves. But where will this technology go next, and how far can it reach? We follow the field from its inception nearly a century ago, into its recent accelerating ascent, and into the future. We will see how companies are using AI today and what might be possible in the near and longer term future. We will see how companies are using AI today and what might be possible in the near- and longer-term future.
Driverless: Intelligent cars and the road ahead
In the year 2014, Google fired a shot heard all the way to Detroit.
Google’s newest driverless car had no steering wheel and no brakes. The message was clear: cars of the future will be born fully
autonomous, with no human driver needed. In the coming decade, self-driving cars will hit the streets, rearranging established industries and reshaping cities, giving us new choices in where we live and how we work and play. Hod Lipson offers insight into the risks and benefits of driverless cars and a lucid and engaging explanation of the enabling technology. The talk makes a compelling case for why government, industry, and consumers need to work together to make the development of driverless cars our society’s next “Apollo moment.”
Robot sentience
“Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?” said Detective Del Spooner to robot, in “I, Robot” (2004) . Machines can create – but can machines be creative? Robots can recognize and imitate emotions, but will they ever feel emotions? Can machines be self aware? These once-philosophical questions are rising in portance as machines are gaining intelligence at an exponential rate. Join Hod Lipson as he shares the shares inside stories from past, present and future of machine sentience, and how we can prepare.
Big Data
In the past decade, data has become the fuel that drives software. The large quantity, variety, and rate of data feeds challenge conventional infrastructure and traditional thinking, yet offer many new opportunities. How do exponential organizations think about data? This talk delivers an introduction to the six waves of big data and the increasingly sophisticated ability to extract information and meaning out of raw data. This session will provide many examples of big data in action – embedded in the fabric of our everyday lives. We’ll cover everything from traditional data analytics to current trends in artificial perception and future self-awareness. We’ll explain how innovative corporations and startups are using big data to amplify their capabilities and accelerate product development.
Automating discovery, from cognitive robotics to computational biology
Can machines discover scientific laws automatically? Despite the prevalence of big data, the process of distilling data into scientific laws has resisted automation. Particularly challenging are situations with small amounts of data that is difficult or expensive to collect. This talk will outline a series of recent research projects, starting with self-reflecting robotic systems, and ending with machines that can formulate hypotheses, design experiments, and interpret the results, to discover new scientific laws. We will see examples from psychology to cosmology, from classical physics to modern physics, from big science to small science.
