Date: Wednesday, 13 February 2008, 6:30 PM
Location: SAP LABS, Building D, 3410 Hillview Avenue,
Palo Alto, CA (Google
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Cost: Free and open to all who wish to attend, but membership is
only $10/year.
Topic
This talk describes a top-down, product development oriented approach to architecting a conversationally intelligent software system. Cognitive Code's SILVIA platform is used as an example of a system that is representative of this approach. The SILVIA platform employs a number of known methods within its implementation. The SILVIA platform also incorporates a number of new, unique methods, as well as new applications of known methods. However, independent of the platform's algorithmic components, the overall SILVIA architecture and implementation was developed with an eye toward rapid product prototyping and development. As such a system, SILVIA derives many of its elements from disparate development disciplines such as game engines and content management systems. It is proposed that a more general hybrid system not only creates an environment conducive to rapid development and deployment across multiple markets, but also may exhibit the desirable property of emergent behavior via the interaction of its integrated components.
About the Speaker
Leslie is the inventor and architect of Cognitive Code's SILVIA platform. As CTO and Founder, he is responsible for the technology and product development arm of the company. Leslie also works with the company's other executives and fellow board members to determine the overall direction and specific implementations of Cognitive Code's business strategies.
Leslie has been a professional software developer since the early 80s, and has worked on everything from hand coding machine-language 3d matrix transformations to managing large-scale development efforts and software groups.
Leslie has been employed by and has consulted to videogame and entertainment companies such as Electronic Arts, Disney, and Sony Pictures. His responsibilities as Principal Engineer, Technical Director, and Software Architect for various projects have included heading teams to develop commercial products, as well as direct, hands-on development of a variety of graphics algorithms, gaming systems, and integrated development tools.
More recently, he was responsible for creating the software architecture of Screenblast, Sony's on-line content creation and sharing service, and developed all of Screenblast's content management systems and associated user tools. In addition, while at Sony, Leslie developed four large-scale patented software technologies and shepherded these technologies through the entire patent process.
At four years of age, Leslie saw the film, 2001: a Space Odyssey. It was at that moment that Leslie began his lifelong interest in and passion for artificial intelligence. It is that passion combined with decades of experience in developing practical, product-oriented systems that has culminated in the development of the SILVIA platform, and the founding of Cognitive Code as a business.