How Artificial Intelligence Works and What It Can and Can't Do

Wednesday, May 27, 1:30-3:00 pm

Springfield Township Library - 8900 Hawthorne Lane, Wyndmoor, 19038

Free and open to all - RSVPs appreciated but not required: https://forms.gle/JHVAvFD5Tt7WhwGS6

Artificial Intelligence seems to be everywhere today.  This interactive talk with Mitch Marcus, RCA Professor of Artificial Intelligence Emeritus at University of Pennsylvania, will help you understand what AI is, and what it can and cannot do.

We'll discuss:

• How do AI Chatbots work?
• Do they really understand?
• Why might we want to limit what AI programs can do?
• Will we have super-intelligent AIs soon? (NO! We'll talk about why.)

Mitch Marcus is RCA Professor of Artificial Intelligence Emeritus in the Department of
Computer and Information Science (CIS) at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was also
Professor of Linguistics. He received an AB from Harvard University in Linguistics and
Applied Math and a Ph.D. from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1978. He was a Member
of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories before coming to Penn in 1987. His early work
focused on computational models of human syntactic processing, showing deep connections
between the linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky and computation, In the early 1990s, he
developed the Penn Treebank, which has been widely used for the past 40 years to train
statistical natural language processing systems. More recently, he ran a multi-university team
developing natural language interfaces for autonomous robots and has developed cognitively
plausible models for automatically learning linguistic structure.

He is a fellow of American Association of Artificial Intelligence, a founding fellow of the
Association for Computational Linguistics and served for over a decade as chair of the advisory
board of the Center of Excellence in Human Language Technologies at Johns Hopkins
University. He has served as chair of Penn’s Computer and Information Science Department, as
chair of the Penn Faculty Senate, chair of the Committee on Science and the Arts of the Franklin
Institute, which recommends Benjamin Franklin Medal Laureates, as well as president of the
Association for Computational Linguistics. He is currently chair of the Penn Association of
Senior and Emeritus Faculty (PASEF).