AI Summit 2025

AI: Myth, Hype, and Reality Keynote: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the meme of the day. What is it? How does it work? What can it do now and what might it do in the future? What might it mean for the human condition and for science, education, business, government, and society? This talk will briefly summarize the history of “thinking machines” beginning with the seminal work of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, before turning to the history and underlying technology of the varieties of deep neural networks. The latest versions of these, enabled by massive cloud computing infrastructure, include such systems as ChatGPT, Gemini, and a host of others. Following this, we will discuss some of the cultural, economic, legal, and technological implications of today’s deep neural networks. We will conclude with a few speculations on “natural intelligence” and some lessons that can be gleaned from biology.

Biography: Daniel A. Reed is the Presidential Professor in Computational Science (emeritus) at the University of Utah, where he previously served as Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs (aka Provost). He has served in a variety of senior academic and industry roles, including as Vice President for Research and Economic Development at the University of Iowa. As Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Technology Policy and Extreme Computing, he helped shape Microsoft's long-term vision for technology innovations in cloud computing and the company's policy engagement with governments and institutions worldwide. Before joining Microsoft, he was the founding director of the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Vice-Chancellor for Information Technology.  As the University of Illinois, he was the Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and Head of the Department of Computer Science.  Dr. Reed just completed a term of service as chair of the U.S. National Science Board (NSB), which provides oversight for the U.S. National Science Foundation.  For a decade, he chaired the Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee (ASCAC). He currently serves as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Argonne National Laboratory and as a member of the Internet2 Board of Trustees.Dr. Reed has served as a member of the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and the U.S. President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC). He is the past chair of the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association (CRA), which represents PhD-granting computer science departments in North America.Dr. Reed is a Fellow of the ACM, the IEEE, and the AAAS. He received his B.S. from Missouri University of Science and Technology and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Purdue University, all in computer science. When not working, he is an amateur astronomer and ham radio operator, callsign KK7EUJ.  He also writes extensively on his blog about science policy and childhood experiences in the Arkansas Ozarks.