Eric Horvitz
Technical Fellow and Director, Microsoft Research Labs
K&L Gates Distinguished Lecture in Ethics and Computational Technologies
Eric Horvitz is a technical fellow at Microsoft, where he serves as the director of Microsoft Research Labs and the Microsoft Research AI (MSR AI) effort. He pursues research on the principles and applications of AI, including efforts in inference, planning, dialog and human-AI collaboration. His efforts and collaborations have led to fielded systems in healthcare, transportation, ecommerce, operating systems and aerospace. He received the Feigenbaum Prize and the Allen Newell Prize for his research contributions. Beyond work on AI principles, he pursues interests on broader societal influences of AI advances, including robustness and safety, fairness and transparency and rising questions on ethical implications of AI systems in the open world. He cofounded the One Hundred Year Study on AI and the Partnership on AI to Support People and Society, a joint effort by industry, civil liberties groups, academics and scientific organizations. He has been elected fellow of the AAAI, ACM, National Academy of Engineering (NAE), American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American College of Medical Informatics. He has served as president of the AAAI, and on advisory committees for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and the Allen Institute for AI.