Michael L. Littman, Brown University, USA

Tuesday, October 28, 2025
16:00 – 17:00 IRST

Title: Telling Machines What To Do: How Machine Learning Can Help

Abstract

It is immensely empowering to delegate information processing work to machines and have them carry out difficult tasks on our behalf. But programming computers is hard. The traditional approach to this problem is to try to fix people: They should work harder to learn to code. In this talk, I argue that a promising alternative is to meet people partway. Specifically, powerful new approaches to machine learning provide ways to infer intent from disparate signals and could help make it easier for everyone to get computational help with their vexing problems.

Biography

Michael L. Littman is a University Professor of Computer Science and Associate Provost for Artificial Intelligence at Brown University. His research, which focuses on machine learning and decision-making under uncertainty, has been recognized with three best-paper awards and three influential paper awards. He received an Outstanding Educator award for his contributions to AI teaching and outreach. Littman is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery and recently served as Division Director for Information and Intelligent Systems at the National Science Foundation. His book, "Code to Joy: Why Everyone Should Learn a Little Programming" was published in October 2023 by MIT Press.