IEEE UK and Ireland ComSoc Distinguished Lecture Tour | Third Wave of AI: Neuro-symbolic AI (Neurosymbolic AI: Past, Present, and Future) by Prof Houbing Song
There are three waves of Artificial Intelligence. The first Wave of AI is Crafted Knowledge, which includes rule-based AI systems. The second wave of AI is Statistical Learning, which includes machine becoming intelligent by using statistical methods. The third wave of AI is contextual adaptation. In the third wave, instead of learning from data, intelligent machines will understand and perceive the world on its own, and learn by understanding the world and reason with it.
Neurosymbolic AI, which combines neural networks with symbolic representations, has emerged as a promising solution of the third wave of AI. In this talk, Prof Song will share his journey from the internet of things to incremental learning and transfer learning to neurosymbolic AI. He will then present his perspective on the emerging area with focus on neurosymbolic transfer learning, neurosymbolic reinforcement learning, and neurosymbolic AI verification and validation (testing and evaluation).
About the Speaker
Houbing Herbert Song (M’12–SM’14-F’23) received the PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, in August 2012. He is currently a Professor, the Founding Director of the NSF Center for Aviation Big Data Analytics (Planning), the Associate Director for Leadership of the DOT Transportation Cybersecurity Center for Advanced Research and Education (Tier 1 Center), and the Director of the Security and Optimisation for Networked Globe Laboratory (SONG Lab, www.SONGLab.us), University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), Baltimore, MD. He is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA).
Prior to joining UMBC, he was a Tenured Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL. He serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (TAI) (2023-present), IEEE Internet of Things Journal (2020-present), IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2021-present), and IEEE Journal on Miniaturisation for Air and Space Systems (J-MASS) (2020-present). He was an Associate Technical Editor for IEEE Communications Magazine (2017-2020). He is the editor of ten books, the author of more than 100 articles and the inventor of 2 patents. His research interests include AI/machine learning/big data analytics, cyber-physical systems/internet of things, and cybersecurity and privacy.
His research has been sponsored by federal agencies (including National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, US Department of Transportation, and Federal Aviation Administration, among others) and industry. His research has been featured on popular news media outlets, including IEEE Spectrum, IEEE GlobalSpec’s Engineering360, IEEE Transmitter, insideBIGDATA, Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), Security Magazine, CXOTech Magazine, Fox News, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Times, and New Atlas.
Prof Song is an IEEE Fellow, an Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA) Fellow, an ACM Distinguished Member, and a Full Member of Sigma Xi. Prof Song has been a Highly Cited Researcher identified by Web of Science since 2021. He is an ACM Distinguished Speaker (2020-present), an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor (2024-present), an IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) Distinguished Lecturer (2024-present), an IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) Distinguished Lecturer (2024-present), an IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) Distinguished Lecturer (2023-present) and an IEEE Systems Council Distinguished Lecturer (2023-present).
Prof Song received Research.com Rising Star of Science Award in 2022, 2021 Harry Rowe Mimno Award bestowed by IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society, and 10+ Best Paper Awards from major international conferences, including IEEE CPSCom-2019, IEEE ICII 2019, IEEE/AIAA ICNS 2019, IEEE CBDCom 2020, WASA 2020, AIAA/ IEEE DASC 2021, IEEE GLOBECOM 2021 and IEEE INFOCOM 2022. He has been an IEEE Impact Creator since 2023.
