Dr. Qirong Ho joins MBZUAI as an assistant professor focusing on machine learning systems, aiming to inspire students to specialize in this area. He emphasizes the importance of AI software systems for turning AI prototypes into real products, addressing a skills imbalance in the AI field. MBZUAI is expanding its machine learning department and finalizing its Centre for Integrative AI. Why it matters: This highlights MBZUAI's focus on developing expertise in AI infrastructure and systems, crucial for translating research into practical applications within the UAE and beyond.
Qirong Ho, co-founder and CTO of Petuum Inc., will be contributing to the "ML Systems for Many" initiative. Petuum is recognized for creating standardized building blocks for AI assembly. Ho also holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and is part of the CASL open-source consortium. Why it matters: Showcases the ongoing efforts to democratize AI development and deployment, making it more accessible and sustainable, although the specific initiative is not further detailed.
MBZUAI students Hanoona Bangalath and Muhammad Maaz, with perfect GPAs, had papers accepted at ECCV 2022 ("Class-agnostic Object Detection with Multi-modal Transformer") and NeurIPS 2022 ("Bridging the Gap between Object and Image-level Representation for Open-Vocabulary Detection"). Both will stay at MBZUAI for their PhDs, crediting the university's resources and faculty. Their supervisor, Salman Khan, praised their curiosity and hard work, highlighting their role in building the institution's reputation. Why it matters: The success of these students underscores MBZUAI's potential to foster high-quality AI research and attract top talent to the UAE.
A PhD candidate from the University of Waterloo presented on threats from large machine learning systems at MBZUAI. The talk covered data privacy during inference and the misuse of ML systems to generate deepfakes. The speaker also analyzed differential privacy and watermarking as potential solutions. Why it matters: Understanding and mitigating the risks of large ML systems is crucial for responsible AI development and deployment in the region.
MBZUAI President Eric Xing delivered a talk at Carnegie Mellon University on May 13, 2022, titled “From Learning, to Meta-Learning, to Lego-Learning — theory, systems, and engineering.” Xing discussed the development of a standard model for learning, inspired by the standard model in physics, which aims to unify various machine learning paradigms. Before joining MBZUAI, Xing was a professor at CMU and founder of Petuum Inc., an AI development platform company. Why it matters: This talk highlights MBZUAI's leadership in advancing theoretical frameworks for machine learning and its commitment to unifying different AI approaches.