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In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts 2024 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award recipient Peter Stone, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and Chief Scientist at Sony AI. He received the award for significant contributions to the theory and practice of AI, especially in reinforcement learning (RL), multiagent systems, transfer learning, and intelligent robotics. As a leading figure in AI research, Stone has fundamentally advanced how autonomous agents learn, plan, and collaborate. His groundbreaking work on RL algorithms has enabled robots to acquire skills through experience. He is an ACM, AAAI, AAAS, and IEEE Fellow, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, and a Fulbright Scholar. At UT Austin, he is the founder and director of the Learning Agents Research Group (LARG) within the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, as well as Founding Director of Texas Robotics. In the past, he also worked at AT&T Labs - Research and co-founded Cogitai, Inc. (acquired by Sony).
Peter explores the intersection of professional research and personal passion, detailing how his lifelong love for soccer fueled his involvement in RoboCup, where he aims to develop humanoid robots capable of competing at a World Cup level by 2050. The conversation highlights his leadership as the Chief Scientist of Sony AI, focusing on landmark projects like GT Sophy, an AI that mastered the complexities of Gran Turismo, and the development of FHIBE, an ethically sourced dataset designed to mitigate bias in machine learning. Throughout the interview, Stone emphasizes the importance of ad hoc teamwork—the ability of autonomous agents to collaborate on the fly with unfamiliar partners. He also shares his passion for undergraduate research and advocacy for AI education at all levels.
