Insights from an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer

Professor Raymond Mooney is the Director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. Having written his first paper on AI as a 17 year-old and spending his entire academic and professional career as an AI researcher, Prof. Mooney has become one of the most respected and distinguished thought leaders in the world on artificial intelligence and natural language processing. First, we talk about what the blanket term “artificial intelligence” really encompasses and dig into some of the groundbreaking research that Prof. Mooney has conducted in the recent past. Next, we take a look into how AI has evolved over the past 70 years and point out some important historical landmarks for the technology. We then take a look into how AI differs in academia and enterprise and end off the episode with a discussion of some of the potential negative ethical implications that AI can bring about as well as some of the tremendous upsides that the technology can have in the near future.