INVITED TALKS






Invited Talks:

  • AI Keynote Speaker:

    • Dr. Kristian J. Hammond, Northwestern University, McCormick School of Engineering

    • Title

      • Humanizing the Machine with Language: Building the Bridge between Data and Information

    • Abstract

      • It is clear that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the world in ways that no other set of technologies ever have. Technologies of machine learning, text analysis, recommendation, and natural language processing are all being applied to a wide variety of problems and yet most of us still struggle to understand what their results mean or even the numbers behind them.


The numbers alone simply do not provide us with what we really need: information and insight. The data and the algorithms are only the first step in finding the insights we want and making them useful to the decision makers who need them.


In this talk, I will present a set of approaches to connecting humans with the intelligent systems that serve them using the tool that is most natural to us, language. We will look at how Intelligent Narrative Generation can play the crucial role of bridging the gap between the world of numbers and symbols and our need for understandable insights. We will dive into examples from business, education and Law to show how the power of language can provide us all with the insights that are still trapped in the wealth of data we now control.

    • Speaker Bio

      • Kristian Hammond is the Bill and Cathy Osborn Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University and the co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence company Narrative Science. He has spent most of his career focused on the problem of making machines smarter. Since the fall of 2016, he has been the faculty lead of Northwestern’s CS + X initiative, exploring how computational thinking can be used to transform fields such as the law, medicine, and education. Most recently, he has taken on the role of directing Northwestern’s Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence. Kris’s primary research is at the intersection of data analytics and human/machine communication. He works on computational methods for interpreting user needs, translating those needs into machine executable queries and analysis, and then mapping the results into natural language. His vision is to automate the relationship between business goals and data science in an effort to scale the link between the data that serves us and the language we need to understand it. Kris believes in humanizing computers with the aim of stopping the process of mechanizing people.


  • IA Keynote Speaker:

    • Dr. Michelle Zhou, Juji, Inc.

    • Title

      • Democratizing AI for Legal Professionals: Creating Cognitive AI Legal Assistants with No Coding

    • Abstract

      • With the rapid advances of AI technologies and their applications, it is inevitable AI would play a big role in legal practices. While legal professionals wish to enlist AI’s help, not everyone has the required skills or resources to create their own AI solutions. In this talk, Michelle will use the development of Cognitive AI Assistants as an example to describe the challenges, highlight the state-of-the-art advances, and practical use cases that Cognitive AI Assistants could aid legal professionals. Moreover, Michelle will highlight how legal professionals can set up, customize, launch, and manage their own custom Cognitive AI Assistant with no coding or no technical skills required, a step toward democratizing AI for legal professionals.

    • Speaker Bio

      • Dr. Michelle Zhou is a Co-founder and CEO of Juji, Inc., an Artificial Intelligence (AI) company that specializes in developing Cognitive AI Assistants in the form of chatbots. She is an expert in the field of Human-Centered AI, an interdisciplinary area that intersects AI and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Zhou has authored more than 100 scientific publications and 45 patent applications on subjects including conversational AI, personality analytics, and interactive visual analytics of big data. Prior to founding Juji, she spent 15 years at IBM Research and the IBM Watson Group, where she managed the research and development of Human-Centered AI technologies and solutions, including IBM Watson Personality Insights. Zhou serves as Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TiiS) and an Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (TIST), and was formerly the Steering Committee Chair for the ACM International Conference Series on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI). She is an ACM Distinguished Member and received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University. https://www.acm.org/articles/people-of-acm/2021/michelle-zhou