February 2012
What should computers do?
10.17.11
6:30PM – 8:30PM
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
Post Parametric 5: Automation
Futures of Computing and Design
IBM DeepQA and Watson researcher John Prager and Area/Code and Starling co-founder Kevin Slavin. Moderated by David Benjamin, GSAPP, and Michael Reed, Columbia Computer Science.
In February 2011, following six years of cutting-edge research on artificial intelligence by the DeepQA Project at IBM, a computing system named Watson defeated two human champions in the game show Jeopardy!
In May 2010, after thirty years of steady growth in algorithmic trading, hundreds of unnamed computers ordered a flurry of trades without human input and caused the United States stock market to lose 9% of its value in five minutes.
Autonomous algorithms now influence many aspects of our lives, including our built environment. In the fifth installment of the Post Parametric series, this pair of presentations and the following discussion will explore current examples of automated algorithms at work and potential futures of computing and design.
