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ISTeC Distinguished Lecture in conjunction with the Computer Science Department and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Seminar Series Almond: A User-Programmable Virtual Assistant that Protects Privacy Speaker: Monica Lam, Professor, Computer Science Department, Stanford University Abstract:Virtual assistants are revolutionizing how we interact with
machines by providing a uniform, highly personalized,
language-based interface to digital services. This talk
presents Almond, an open-source, crowd-sourced research project
to explore the potential of virtual assistants. Can we program
the virtual assistant to perform complex tasks in natural
language? Can we protect privacy by running a virtual assistant
on our own personal devices?
Can we control access by specifying, in natural language, who,
what, when, where, and how our data are to be shared? Can we
combine the advantages of language-based interfaces with
graphical user interfaces? Our preliminary solutions to all
these questions are based on prior work in multiple areas:
machine learning, language design, distributed systems, and
human-computer interfaces.
Bio:Dr. Monica Lam has been a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University since 1988. She is the Faculty Director of the Stanford MobiSocial Computing Laboratory. Her research spans the areas of architecture, compilers, distributed systems, machine learning, and human-computer interfaces. Her current research is to develop an open end-user programmable virtual assistant platform that protects users' privacy. She received a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1987. Prof. Lam is an ACM Fellow, and a co-author of the "dragon book", the most popular textbook in compilers. |