In this terms Strachey lecture, Professor Monika Henzinger gives an introduction to differential privacy with an emphasis on differential private algorithms that can handle changing input data. Decisions are increasingly automated using rules that were learnt from personal data. Thus, it is important to guarantee that the privacy of the data is protected during the learning process. To formalize the notion of an algorithm that protects the privacy of its data, differential privacy was...

It’s said that Henry Ford’s customers wanted a “a faster horse”. If Henry Ford was selling us artificial intelligence today, what would the customer call for, “a smarter human”? That’s certainly the picture of machine intelligence we find in science fiction narratives, but the reality of what we’ve developed is far more mundane. Car engines produce prodigious power from petrol. Machine intelligences deliver decisions derived from data. In...

An introduction to algorithmic aspects of symmetry and similarity, ranging from the fundamental complexity theoretic "Graph Isomorphism Problem" to applications in optimisation and machine learning Symmetry is a fundamental concept in mathematics, science and engineering, and beyond. Understanding symmetries is often crucial for understanding structures. In computer science, we are mainly interested in the symmetries of combinatorial structures. Computing the symmetries of such a structure is...

An overview of work on probabilistic soft logic (PSL), an SRL framework for large-scale collective, probabilistic reasoning in relational domains and a description of recent work which integrates neural and symbolic (NeSy) reasoning. Our ability to collect, manipulate, analyze, and act on vast amounts of data is having a profound impact on all aspects of society. Much of this data is heterogeneous in nature and interlinked in a myriad of complex ways. From information integration to...

There has been a proliferation of technological developments in the last few years that are beginning to improve how we perceive, attend to, notice, analyse and remember events, people, data and other information. There has been a proliferation of technological developments in the last few years that are beginning to improve how we perceive, attend to, notice, analyse and remember events, people, data and other information. These include machine learning, computer vision, advanced user...

Mixed Signals: audio and wearable data analysis for health diagnostics Wearable and mobile devices are very good proxies for human behaviour. Yet, making the inference from the raw sensor data to individuals’ behaviour remains difficult. The list of challenges is very long: from collecting the right data and using the right sensor, respecting resource constraints, identifying the right analysis techniques, labelling the data, limiting privacy invasion, to dealing with heterogeneous data...

The advantages of computing for society are tremendous. But while new technological developments emerge, we also witness a number disadvantages and unwanted side-effects. The advantages of computing for society are tremendous. But while new technological developments emerge, we also witness a number disadvantages and unwanted side-effects: from the speed with which fake news spreads to the formation of new echo-chambers and the enhancement of polarization in society. It is time to reflect...

As AI technologies enter our everyday lives at an ever increasing pace, there is a greater need for AI systems to work synergistically with humans. As AI technologies enter our everyday lives at an ever increasing pace, there is a greater need for AI systems to work synergistically with humans. This requires AI systems to exhibit behavior that is explainable to humans. Synthesizing such behavior requires AI systems to reason not only with their own models of the task at hand, but also about...

Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation itself that explains them and that will itself shape the 21st century for good and ill. Yet...

Medicine and Physiology in the Age of Dynamics: Newton Abraham Lecture 2020 Lecture by Professor Alan Garfinkel (2019-2020 Newton Abraham Visiting Professor, University of Oxford, Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Integrative Biology and Physiology, University of California, Los Angeles)

Can we build on our understanding of supervised learning to define broader aspects of the intelligence phenomenon. Strachey Lecture delivered by Leslie Valiant. Supervised learning is a cognitive phenomenon that has proved amenable to mathematical definition and analysis, as well as to exploitation as a technology. The question we ask is whether one can build on our understanding of supervised learning to define broader aspects of the intelligence phenomenon. We regard reasoning as the major...

Professor Leslie Kaelbling (MIT) gives the 2019 Stachey lecture. The Strachey Lectures are generously supported by OxFORD Asset Management. We, as robot engineers, have to think hard about our role in the design of robots and how it interacts with learning, both in 'the factory' (that is, at engineering time) and in 'the wild' (that is, when the robot is delivered to a customer). I will share some general thoughts about the strategies for robot design and then talk in detail about some work I...

Why has AI been so hard and what are the problems that we might work on in order to make real progress to human level intelligence, or even the super intelligence that many pundits believe is just around the corner? In his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" Alan Turing estimated that sixty people working for fifty years should be able to program a computer (running at 1950 speed) to have human level intelligence. AI researchers have spent orders of magnitude more effort than...

This talk is about the experience of providing privacy when running analytics on users’ personal data. The two-sided market of Cloud Analytics emerged almost accidentally, initially from click-through associated with user's response to search results, and then adopted by many other services, whether web mail or social media. The business model seen by the user is of a free service (storage and tools for photos, video, social media etc). The value to the provider is untrammeled access to the...

This talk is about the experience of providing privacy when running analytics on users’ personal data. The two-sided market of Cloud Analytics emerged almost accidentally, initially from click-through associated with user's response to search results, and then adopted by many other services, whether web mail or social media. The business model seen by the user is of a free service (storage and tools for photos, video, social media etc). The value to the provider is untrammeled access to the...

Stroustrup discusses the development and evolution of the C++, one of the most widely used programming languages ever. The development of C++ started in 1979. Since then, it has grown to be one of the most widely used programming languages ever, with an emphasis on demanding industrial uses. It was released commercially in 1985 and evolved through one informal standard (“the ARM”) and several ISO standards: C++98, C++11, C++14, and C++17. How could an underfinanced language without a...

Stroustrup discusses the development and evolution of the C++, one of the most widely used programming languages ever. The development of C++ started in 1979. Since then, it has grown to be one of the most widely used programming languages ever, with an emphasis on demanding industrial uses. It was released commercially in 1985 and evolved through one informal standard (“the ARM”) and several ISO standards: C++98, C++11, C++14, and C++17. How could an underfinanced language without a...

Éva Tardos, Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, gives the 2017 Ada Lovelace Lecture on 6th June 2017. Selfish behaviour can often lead to suboptimal outcome for all participants, a phenomenon illustrated by many classical examples in game theory. Over the last decade we developed good understanding on how to quantify the impact of strategic user behaviour on the overall performance in many games (including traffic routing as well as online auctions). In this talk we will...

Professor Kraus will show how combining machine learning techniques for human modelling, human behavioural models, formal decision-making and game theory approaches enables agents to interact well with people. Automated agents that interact proficiently with people can be useful in supporting, training or replacing people in complex tasks. The inclusion of people presents novel problems for the design of automated agents’ strategies. People do not necessarily adhere to the optimal, monolithic...

Professor Kraus will show how combining machine learning techniques for human modelling, human behavioural models, formal decision-making and game theory approaches enables agents to interact well with people. Automated agents that interact proficiently with people can be useful in supporting, training or replacing people in complex tasks. The inclusion of people presents novel problems for the design of automated agents’ strategies. People do not necessarily adhere to the optimal, monolithic...

Professor Zoubin Ghahramani gives a talk on probabilistic modelling from it's foundations to current areas of research at the frontiers of machine learning. Probabilistic modelling provides a mathematical framework for understanding what learning is, and has therefore emerged as one of the principal approaches for designing computer algorithms that learn from data acquired through experience. Professor Ghahramani will review the foundations of this field, from basics to Bayesian nonparametric...

Students undertaking undergraduate (first) degrees in Computer Science, Computer Science & Philosophy and Maths & Computer Science undertake a Group Design Practical as a compulsory part of the course. The Group Design Practical, which runs from January, sees teams of four to six undergraduate students battling it out with their chosen project. Many of the challenges having been set, or sponsored by industry partners, which in 2016 included Research, Oxford Asset Management, Bloomberg...

Professor Andrew Hodges author of 'Alan Turing: The Enigma' talks about Turing's work and ideas from the definition of computability, the universal machine to the prospect of Artificial Intelligence. In 1951, Christopher Strachey began his career in computing. He did so as a colleague of Alan Turing, who had inspired him with a 'Utopian' prospectus for programming. By that time, Turing had already made far-reaching and futuristic innovations, from the definition of computability and the...