Judy Qiu
The School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering will welcome a panel of distinguished international guests for the “High-Performance Systems and Analytics for Big Data: A path to future Artificial General Intelligence” workshop at Luddy Hall April 11. The workshop, which focuses on large-scale data analytics on high-performance computing clusters, will host prominent experts from government, higher education, and industry.
“Data sizes are growing exponentially as is the complexity of the required analysis systems,” said Judy Qiu, associate professor of intelligent systems engineering and one of the chairs of the event. “High-performance computing is playing a key role in the ecosystems that enable progress in scientific, medical, and commercial areas.”
Linton Ward, a distinguished engineer and the chief engineer for Big Data and Analytics PowerSystems for IBM, will present the keynote address. Other experts include researchers from Fudan University, Intel, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NEC Corp., Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and the U.K. Science & Technologies Facility Council.
The workshop will explore the possibilities surrounding Artificial General Intelligence, a form of AI that isn’t domain specific. The goal of AGI is to create computational intelligence that can think and reason on their own in the same ways that would make them indistinguishable from humans. The applications for such technology are endless, but developing AGI won’t be easy. Researchers at SICE could play an important role.
“We see ‘Artificial General Intelligence’—with "AI+X" adding advanced machine learning to every field X—as being built on high-performance big data computing with pervasive implications for SICE,” Qiu said. “It’s a strength of ours, and we can be a leader.”
The workshop, which will run from 7 a.m.-6:30 p.m., was organized by the Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering in conjunction with the IU Office of the Vice Provost for Research. The goal of the event is to create report based off the talks and panel discussion presented at the workshop, which will then be posted on the event’s website, with the possibility of a future journal publication.