Expert Available on Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s James Hendler is the Director of the Future of Computing Institute; Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web and Cognitive Sciences; and Director of the RPI-IBM Artificial Intelligence Research Collaboration.

“In a nutshell, ChatGPT creates something not dissimilar from your phone when it suggests the next word you will type in a text, “says Hendler. “It just does it much better because it has consumed billions of documents and makes its predictions based on the probability of words in this large learning set. At base, ChatGPT is a technology that is made out of sophisticated numbers, with human intervention to avoid how previous chatbots have learned to say horrible things, and with some rules. The problem with ChatGPT is knowing when it is right or wrong. How do we know when to trust models like this? The AI community is still working it out. At RPI, we are part of a project that is crowdsourcing reports of ChatGPT errors, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses, and monitoring how the changes the companies creating such technologies are impacting this. The future will require humans and AI systems to work together, but we cannot do that until we have a much better understanding of what these systems really can and can’t do well.”

Hendler is a data scientist with specific interests in open government and scientific data, data science for healthcare, AI and machine learning, semantic data integration, and the use of data in government. One of the originators of the Semantic Web, he has authored over 450 books, technical papers, and articles in the areas of Open Data, the Semantic Web, artificial intelligence, and data policy and governance.

Hendler is also the former Chief Scientist of the Information Systems Office at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and was awarded a US Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Medal in 2002. He is the first computer scientist ever to have served on the Board of Reviewing editors for Science.

In 2010, Hendler was selected as an “Internet Web Expert” by the US government and helped in the development and launch of the US data.gov Open Data website. In 2013, he was appointed as the Open Data Advisor to New York State and in 2015 appointed a member of the US Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee. In 2016, Hendler became a member of the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information, in 2017 a member of the Director’s Advisory Committee of the National Security Directorate of PNNL, and in 2021 chair of the ACM’s global Technology Policy Council. Hendler is a Fellow of the US National Academy of Public Administration, the AAAI, AAAS, ACM, BCS and IEEE.

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About Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:

Founded in 1824, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is America’s first technological research university. Rensselaer encompasses five schools, over 30 research centers, more than 140 academic programs including 25 new programs, and a dynamic community made up of over 6,800 students and 104,000 living alumni. Rensselaer faculty and alumni include upwards of 155 National Academy members, six members of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, six National Medal of Technology winners, five National Medal of Science winners, and a Nobel Prize winner in Physics. With nearly 200 years of experience advancing scientific and technological knowledge, Rensselaer remains focused on addressing global challenges with a spirit of ingenuity and collaboration. To learn more, please visit www.rpi.edu.

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