New directions in artificial intelligence is topic of lecture at SUNY New Paltz

NEW PALTZ — The School of Science and Engineering at The State University of New York at New Paltz will continue its colloquium series with a lecture, titled “Agent Based Systems-The Future of Computer Science?” at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Feb.10, in the Coykendall Science Building Auditorium.

The speaker, Dr. Simon Parsons, will discuss the agent-based approach to artificial intelligence and the major role it might play in the future of computer science.

“The past decade has seen a massive growth in the Internet and the way we use computers,” said Parsons. “With the use of wireless communication, few computers are now isolated, and most are connected through the Internet. While the science of individual (stand alone) computers is well understood, we still lack the tools to manage the complexity of the interactions that occur in an extended network.”

Dr. Parsons is an associate professor of computer science at Brooklyn College of CUNY. He received the IEEE Achievement Medal for Young Engineers in 1998 and the Best Paper Award at the 14th Belgian-Dutch Conference on Artificial Intelligence. He has already authored many research papers and spoken widely on this subject.

David Clark, associate dean of the School of Science and Engineering and a SUNY Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, said that before the Internet, most computers operated in isolation.

“Today, the challenge is to understand and predict the behavior of a network as large as the Internet.” said Clark. “The agent-based system will use artificial intelligence techniques to design programs that can independently browse the Internet in order to accomplish prescribed tasks in a predicable manner. Autonomous agents are rapidly coming into wider use.”

The School of Science and Engineering was established in 2001 to bring a mathematics and science focus to the SUNY New Paltz campus. It offers bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in chemistry, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, environmental science, geology, mathematics and physics.

The colloquia are free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture. For more information or directions, call (845) 257-3728 or visit the School of Science and Engineering on the Web at www.newpaltz.edu/sse.