Keynotes

Artificial Intelligence and Human Thinking

Prof Robert Kowalski, Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow

Research in AI has built upon the tools and techniques of many different disciplines, including formal logic, probability theory, decision theory, management science, linguistics and philosophy. However, the application of these disciplines in AI has necessitated the development of many enhancements and extensions. Among the most powerful of these are the methods of computational logic.

I will argue that computational logic, embedded in an agent cycle, combines and improves upon both traditional logic and classical decision theory. I will also argue that many of its methods can be used, not only in AI, but also in ordinary life, to help people improve their own human intelligence without the assistance of computers.

Professor Robert Anthony Kowalski is a Senior Research Investigator and Emeritus Professor of Computational Logic at the Department of Computing of the Imperial College London. Professor Kowalski is recognized for his contributions to logic for knowledge representation and problem solving, including his pioneering work on automated theorem proving and logic programming.

Building and Operating Products at Google-scale

Ollie Cook, Site Reliability Manager, Enterprise, Google

Building products for Google-scale presents some unique challenges in the software development and operational spheres. Through exploring techniques relating to design, development, configuration, deployment and monitoring the talk will describe how Google delivers high availability products with low latency to millions of customers worldwide.

Ollie Cook is a site reliability manager at Google, managing the operational teams supporting Google Calendar and real-time communications. His teams focus on product and system availability, monitoring, capacity planning and deployment. Prior to joining Google in 2011, Ollie was the technology services manager at Betfair, an online gambling provider, specialising in low-latency trading systems, and deployment and configuration management of their global computing footprint.