Description

AI is the most transformative technology in the history of humankind. The scientific development of AI has reached a level of maturity that has allowed an explosion in its practical application. The dramatic growth of AI deployment is fueled by an exponential increase in data, capacity and sophistication of models and availability of computational power. Like any powerful new technology, AI challenges humanity with delicate balances and tradeoffs between incredible benefits and potentially disastrous risks. As we build and deploy AI at planetary scale, we must do so responsibly. But building responsible AI ultimately comes down to revisiting old human and societal questions with renewed urgency. To build AI responsibly we need to turn our attention to first leading a meaningful life. In this fireside chat between Professor Pascale Fung and Dr. Joaquin Quiñonero Candela we follow Joaquin’s trajectory to motivate hard questions about the work and life of an AI scientist and practitioner.

Speaker Biography

Dr. Joaquin Quinonero Candela serves on the Board of Directors of the Partnership on AI on the Spanish Government’s Advisory Board on AI. Joaquin recently resigned from Facebook to fully support his wife with rebuilding her career. Until September 2021, Joaquin was the Distinguished Technical Lead for Responsible AI at Facebook. Before this, he built and led the Facebook AML (Applied Machine Learning) team, driving product impact at scale through applied research in machine learning and all applied AI disciplines (e.g. computer vision, natural language processing, computational photography, speech recognition, ranking and more). AML also built the unified AI platform that powers all production applications of AI at Facebook. Before Facebook, Joaquin taught at University of Cambridge, worked at Microsoft Research, and conducted postdoctoral research at three institutions in Germany, including the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. He received his PhD from the Technical University of Denmark.