Biography:Noam Slonim

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Short description: Israeli scientist


Noam Slonim (Hebrew: נעם סלונים) (born in 1968 in Jerusalem) is an Israeli computer scientist, specializing in Natural Language Processing and Computational Argumentation. He is an IBM Distinguished Engineer, and the Principal Investigator of Project Debater at the IBM Research lab at Haifa, Israel.

Education and research interests

Slonim graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1996 with a B.S. degree in Computer Science, Physics, and Mathematics. In 2002 he completed Ph.D. summa cum laude at the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation at the Hebrew University, under the supervision of Professor Naftali Tishby. His thesis focused on the theory and applications of the Information Bottleneck method. From 2003 till 2006 he did post-doctoral studies at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, working with Professor Bill Bialek and Professor Saeed Tavazoie. He joined IBM Research in 2007. Slonim holds over 25 patents (granted or pending) and has co-authored more than 70 scientific publications.[1]

Research activities

From 1998 to 2003 he worked on the theory and applications[2] of the Information Bottleneck method, suggesting various cluster analysis algorithms inspired by this method, and demonstrating the practical value of these algorithms on various domains.

From 2003 to 2006 he worked on[3] developing Machine Learning algorithms that rely on Information Theory concepts, and applied these algorithms to the analysis of various types of Genomics data.

In 2011 he proposed[4] to develop the first Artificial Intelligence system that can meaningfully participate in a full live debate with an expert human debater. This work gave rise to Project Debater,[5] that debated expert human debaters in several live events[6] during 2018[7] and 2019.[8] In 2020, Slonim delivered the opening keynote at the EMNLP conference, describing the IBM Research work on developing Project Debater.

Writing and video career

  • In 1996 Slonim was a writer[9] for Season 4 of The Cameric Five TV comedy show.
  • In 1997-1998 he published a weekly column in Haaretz newspaper, focused on brain science research.
  • In 1997-1999 he co-created and co-wrote the Israeli sitcom, Puzzle.
  • In 2008-2010 he was the head writer of Season 2 and Season 3 of the Israeli Sitcom, Ha-movilim.
  • In 2020 he was featured in the documentary The Debater[10], an official selection of the 2020 Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival.

References

  1. Slonim, Noam. "Google Scholar". https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KjvrNGMAAAAJ&hl=en. 
  2. Slonim, Noam; Friedman, Nir; Tishby, Naftali (2006). "Multivariate Information Bottleneck". Neural Computation 18 (8): 1739–1789. doi:10.1162/neco.2006.18.8.1739. PMID 16771652. https://direct.mit.edu/neco/article/18/8/1739/7079/Multivariate-Information-Bottleneck. 
  3. Slonim, Noam; Singh Atwal, Gurinder; Tkačik, Gašper; Bialek, William (20 December 2005). "Information-based clustering". PNAS 102 (51): 18297–18302. doi:10.1073/pnas.0507432102. PMID 16352721. Bibcode2005PNAS..10218297S. 
  4. Slonim, Noam; Bilu, Y; Alzate, C; al., et (17 March 2021). "An autonomous debating system". Nature 591 (18 March 2021): 379–384. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03215-w. PMID 33731946. Bibcode2021Natur.591..379S. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03215-w. 
  5. Amer, Pakinam (17 March 2021). "Scientific American". Springer Nature America. https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/ai-can-now-debate-with-humans-and-sometimes-convince-them-too/. 
  6. "Am I arguing with a machine? AI debaters highlight need for transparency". Nature 592 (7853): 166. 7 April 2021. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-00867-6. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 33828323. Bibcode2021Natur.592..166.. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00867-6. 
  7. Metz, Cade; Lohr, Steve (18 June 2018). "IBM Unveils System That 'Debates' With Humans". New York Times (Section B, Page 3). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/technology/ibm-debater-artificial-intelligence.html. 
  8. Sumagaysay, Levi (11 February 2019). "IBM's AI loses debate to human but has strong showing". The Mercury News. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/11/ibms-ai-loses-debate-to-human-but-has-strong-showing/. 
  9. Borenstein, Seth (31 March 2019). "No AI in humor: R2-D2 walks into a bar, doesn't get the joke". Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/us-news-ap-top-news-artificial-intelligence-in-state-wire-or-state-wire-bae71c3bef8145ecaaa84bca24d77430. 
  10. Davis, Joshua; Spitzer, Harry. "The Debater". Epic Digital. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11962008/.