The new Nobel: INFORMS member awarded top AI prize

I was doing all this work trying to convince people about how important interpretable models were for high-stakes decisions. To be honest, up until I got the Squirrel Award I didn’t realize that people had been listening to what I was saying, and they really were. Something changed a few years ago and they had started listening and all that work really did make a difference. Knowing that means everything to me.  

On this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with an INFORMS member whose work is truly Saving Lives, Saving Money, and Solving Problems. Cynthia Rudin, professor of computer science and engineering at Duke University, has been awarded the 2021 Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity, an honor considered to be the New Nobel Prize. This award recognizes positive impacts of artificial intelligence to protect, enhance, and improve human life in meaningful ways with long-lived effects. In particular, her work with Con Edison, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Cambridge Police Department played a key role in firmly cementing interpretable machine learning as a mainstream field within artificial intelligence.

Want to learn more? Check out the additional resources and links listed below for more information about what was discussed in this episode.

INFORMS Member Wins $1 Million Artificial Intelligence Prize, Equivalent to the Nobel