Moshe Vardi available to discuss AI and automation

NEWS RELEASE

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Moshe Vardi wins ACM Presidential Award, available to discuss AI

HOUSTON — (June 23, 2017) – Rice University’s Moshe Vardi, a leading expert on artificial intelligence and automation, will be honored June 24 in San Francisco by the Association of Computing Machinery for his leadership of its flagship publication, Communications of the ACM.

Moshe Vardi

Vardi has studied automation and labor trends for several years. His research and commentary have been cited regularly by national and international news media. Vardi joined Rice’s faculty in 1993 and is the Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering and director of Rice’s Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology.

Vardi said more attention should be given to the economic, social and political consequences of substituting machines for human workers. Last December at Rice, Vardi hosted the first U.S. academic conference on automation, titled “Humans, Machines and the Future of Work.”

Just this week, news was made in the AI and automation sphere: Tesla announced a new AI chief to oversee the company’s self-learning technology. Nasdaq featured an article about Intel’s belief that “making of the future starts with a focus on AI.” Today Investor’s Business Daily reported on the birth of the AI industry and early investing “hot spots.”

To arrange an interview with Vardi about the ACM award or AI and automation, email vardi@rice.edu or contact David Ruth at david@rice.edu or 713-348-6327.

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Related columns and presentations by Vardi:

Vardi editor-in-chief columns in ACM:
https://cacm.acm.org/about-communications/editors-letters/

Jobs. Driving. And machines that can learn.
Houston Chronicle/Gray Matters — May 25, 2016
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/Morality-Driving-And-machines-that-can-learn-7942283.php

Are robots taking our jobs?
The Conversation — April 6, 2016
https://theconversation.com/are-robots-taking-our-jobs-56537

Humans, machines and the future of work
Video presentation from Oxford University — Dec. 18, 2015
http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/humans-machines-and-future-work

The consequences of machine intelligence
The Atlantic — Oct. 25, 2012
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/the-consequences-of-machine-intelligence/264066/

ACM award:

The 2017 ACM Presidential Award honors Vardi’s efforts to transform the association’s flagship publication, Communications of the ACM, into “a monthly must-read for a global audience.” He took the reigns as editor-in-chief of Communications of the ACM in 2008 and helped build its circulation to nearly 100,000. He will step down as editor-in-chief June 30. The association’s 2017 award citation lauded Vardi as “a true visionary whose outstanding leadership over the last decade has cemented the reputation of ACM’s flagship publication — Communications of the ACM — as the premier chronicler of computing technologies by opening its pages to leading voices from multiple disciplines, extending its reach with new digital and mobile platforms and making it a monthly must-read for a global audience.”

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