Toby Walsh

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Toby Walsh (born April 11, 1964 in England ) is a British-Australian computer scientist who researches and publishes in the field of artificial intelligence . His research focuses on group decisions , constraint programming , and the satisfiability problem of propositional logic . Since 2016 he has been Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney , Australia . He is also working on the Data61 project within the Australian research organization Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). From 2016 to the beginning of 2020 he was head of the AMPLify Project at the Institute for Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin . In July 2020, Walsh received an Australian Laureate Fellowship for a large-scale research project on the trustworthy design of AI systems.

Since 2017 he has published popular science books on artificial intelligence, which are also translated into German.

Education

Walsh first studied theoretical physics and mathematics at the University of Cambridge . He then earned an M. Sc. and a Ph.D. in the field of artificial intelligence at The University of Edinburgh . Under Alan Bundy he wrote a dissertation entitled Theory of abstraction . He then conducted research in the field of complexity theory and in particular the properties of algorithms .

Professional background

As a scientist, he has held research positions in several countries, including England, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, France, Germany, and Sweden. In 2014 he received research funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to conduct research at the University of Potsdam . In 2016, with the help of research funding from the European Research Council , he set up a department for Algorithmic Decision Theory at the Institute for Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin and was a frequent guest there. Since 1989 he has regularly participated in international conferences. In addition to his research, he is co-editor of fundamental works such as the Handbook of Constraint Programming (2006) or the Handbook of Satisfiability (2009), and conference proceedings from scientific conferences such as the volume on Algorithmic Decision Theory: 4th International Conference ADT 2015 .

In 2020, Walsh received an Australian Laureate Fellowship . Associated with the award is the award of a grant (over A $ 3 million) over a five-year period to complete a pre-defined project. The aim of the project is to examine how AI systems can be designed to be trustworthy, fair, explainable, and transparent, while at the same time protecting people's privacy. Both the appropriate tool and recommendations to the politically responsible should be created. The funding application was based on the increasing involvement of computers in public and private decisions.

Others

From 2011 to 2013, Walsh was an elected member of the Executive Board of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence , a non-profit organization based in Palo Alto , California dedicated to the research and application of Artificial Intelligence.

Walsh is involved in the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots , an alliance of non-governmental organizations founded in October 2012 that advocates a preventive ban on deadly autonomous weapons . An open letter to the United Nations warned that today's developments in AI could lead to a new arms race among many countries in the world. He was one of the leading technology experts who signed the letter, which was presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) on July 28, 2015 . He later gave a lecture on the subject at TEDxBerlin.

In 2018, he chaired an expert group at the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) that, at the request of Government Advisor on Science and Technology, Alan Finkel, produced a report entitled Deployment of Artificial Intelligence and what it presents for Australia .

In the same year, he publicly advocated that the six largest information technology companies , but above all Facebook and Google, should be broken up into smaller companies, taxed more heavily and placed under stricter state regulation.

Walsh is one of the organizers of the RoboCup , a football competition for robot teams.

Through interviews, lectures and popular science books, Walsh tries to inform the public about the opportunities and dangers of AI.

Both of his books have since been translated into several languages. In the book It's Alive , which was translated into German in 2017 , he summarizes the past, present and future developments in AI. He makes ten predictions of what our world could look like in 2050 as a result of the influence of technical developments made possible by AI. On the one hand, he sees an improvement in living conditions, but also the risk that this does not happen uniformly, but could lead to growing inequality. He takes the position that regulation of AI research is necessary so that the possibilities of AI are steered in the right direction.

In the subsequent work, entitled 2062 , he continues his analysis and records why he believes that in the short time until 2062, the species Homo sapiens will be overtaken by Homo digitalis and human thinking will be replaced by machine thinking. In doing so, he spreads some ideas on how decision-makers and companies can avoid foreseeable and less foreseeable dangers through conscious ethical decisions. In an interview conducted in 2019, he said:

“In 2062 the world will look very different than it is today. That is why we have to set the course today for a world worth living in. We have to make sure that people still have a job, an income, that they can shape their own future. Philosophers have to play a role in the further development of machines, because there are many ethical questions to be solved. Then the AI ​​can be useful to us. "

Awards (selection)

  • 2017: New Statesman. Books of the Year
  • 2016: NSW Premier's Prize for Excellence in Engineering and Information and Communications Technologies
  • 2016: Fellow of Australian Academy of Science
  • 2014: Humboldt Research Award
  • 2008: AAAI Fellow
  • 2003: EurAI Fellow
  • 1992: Royal Society European Exchange Fellow.

Publications

Books

  • It's Alive! Artificial Intelligence from the Logic Piano to Killer Robots . Latrobe University Press, Carlton (Vic.) 2017, ISBN 978-1-86395-943-8 .
    • Android Dreams: The Past, Present and Future of Artificial Intelligence . Hurst, London 2017, ISBN 978-1-78738-057-8 (UK edition).
    • Machines that Think: The Future of Artificial Intelligence . Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY 2018, ISBN 978-1-63388-375-8 (US edition).
    • It's alive: How artificial intelligence will change our lives . Edition Körber, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-89684-266-4 .
  • 2062: The World that AI Made . LaTrobe University Press, Carlton (Vic.) 2018, ISBN 978-1-76064-051-4 .
    • 2062: The year in which artificial intelligence will be our equal . Riva, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-7423-0860-3 .

Articles (selection)

  • (2020) Jiro Kokuryo, Catharina Maracke, Toby Walsh: Introduction . In: AI for Everyone: benefitting from and building trust in the technology . AI Access, 2020, ISBN 978-0-244-55730-0 (112 pp., [1] [PDF]).
  • (2017) Toby Walsh: End of work days . In: The Big Issue Australia . No. 546 , September 22, 2017, ISSN  1326-639X (20 pages).
  • (2016) Toby Walsh: Turing's red flag . In: Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) . tape 59 , no. 7 , July 2016, ISSN  0001-0782 , p. 34-37 , doi : 10.1145 / 2838729 ( [2] ).
  • (2016) Christian Bessiere, Abderrazak Daoud, u. a .: New Approaches to Constraint Acquisition . In: Christian Bessiere u. a. (Ed.): Data Mining and Constraint Programming . Springer, 2016, ISBN 978-3-319-50136-9 , pp. 51–76 (as co-author).
  • (2016) Vincent Conitzer and Toby Walsh: Barriers to Manipulation in Voting . In: Handbook of Computational Social Choice . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2016, ISBN 978-1-107-06043-2 , pp. 127-145 .
  • (2014) Toby Walsh: Candy Crush's Puzzling Mathematics . In: American Scientist . tape 102 , 102 (November / December), 2014, pp. 430-433 ( [3] ).
  • (2011) Francesca Rossi, Kristen Brent Venable and Toby Walsh: A Short Introduction to Preferences: Between Artificial Intelligence and Social Choice . Morgan and Claypool Publishers, 2011, ISBN 978-1-60845-586-7 .
  • (1997) Gent, Ian P. et al. a .: How not to do it (=  Research Report Series . No. 97.27 ). School of Computer Studies, University of Leeds, 1997 ( [4] [PDF] as co-author).
  • (1996) Gent, Ian P., and Toby Walsh: The search for satisfaction . Department of Computer Science. University of Strathclyde.
  • (1996) Toby Walsh: A divergence critic for inductive proof . In: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research . tape 4 , p. 209-235 .
  • (1993) Ian P. Gent, and Toby Walsh: An Empirical Analysis of Search in GSAT . In: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research . tape 1 , 1993, p. 47-59 ( [5] [PDF]).
  • (1992) David Basin, Toby Walsh: Difference Unification . Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, Saarbrücken ( [6] [PDF]).
  • (1992) Fausto Giunehiglia, Toby Walsh: A theory of abstraction . In: Artificial Intelligence . tape 57 , 1992, pp. 323-389 ( [7] ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Allocation Made PracticaL. Retrieved July 22, 2020 .
  2. ^ Publications. In: Institute for Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science. Retrieved July 21, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Prof. Dr. Toby Walsh. Retrieved July 21, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b Patricia Pätzold: We have to set the course today. TUB-newsportal, July 29, 2019, accessed on July 21, 2020 .
  5. ^ Opening Speech. In: videolectures.net. Retrieved July 20, 2020 (22nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Barcelona 2011).
  6. ↑ 2020 Laureate Profile: Professor Toby Walsh. Retrieved July 9, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Scheme Round Statistics for Approved Proposals - Australian Laureate Fellowships 2020 round 1. In: Australian Research Council. Retrieved July 9, 2020 .
  8. ^ Past AAAI Officials. Retrieved July 21, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Oct 20 2015. In: Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. Retrieved July 21, 2020 .
  10. ↑ open letter. (PDF) In: Future of Life Institute. July 28, 2015, accessed July 9, 2020 .
  11. ↑ How can you stop killer robots. October 8, 2015, accessed July 21, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Toby Walsh: Facebook and Google are run by today's robber barons. Break them up. In: The Guardian . October 23, 2018, accessed July 21, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Claudia Dreifus: Toby Walsh, AI Expert, Is Racing to Stop the Killer Robots. In: New York Times . July 30, 2020, accessed June 29, 2020 .
  14. ↑ TV, radio, presentations, events. Retrieved July 21, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Alexander Armbruster: He was 13 years old: Computer specialist Toby Walsh. In: FAZ . September 29, 2018, accessed July 21, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Simon Hurtz: These technologies can be scary. In: Sueddeutsche Zeitung . December 27, 2018, accessed July 21, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Toby Walsh: Homo digitalis - is that the future? In: PC world . October 18, 2019, accessed July 21, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Vera Linß: Making artificial intelligence capable of democracy - Toby Walsh: "2062". (Podcast) In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur . May 4, 2019, accessed July 21, 2020 .
  19. ^ Books of the Year 2017. In: New Statesman. November 21, 2017, accessed July 21, 2020 .
  20. ↑ 2016 Category Prize Winners. In: chiefscientist.nsw.gov.au. NSW Government, accessed July 21, 2020 .
  21. ^ Awards and Honors. August 5, 2019, accessed July 9, 2020 .
  22. ^ Elected AAAI Fellows. In: aaai.org. Association for the Advanement of Artificial Intelligence, accessed July 21, 2020 .
  23. ^ Fellows. In: eurai.org. European Association for Artificial Intelligence, accessed July 21, 2020 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Walsh, Toby
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1964