✨ Event Description

Join us for this special keynote by Professor Christopher Manning of Stanford University, hosted by the RAIsE Hub (RMIT Artificial Intelligence Advanced Innovation Experience Hub).

Professor Manning is one of the world’s most influential AI researchers, renowned for his pioneering contributions to Natural Language Processing (NLP), Large Language Models (LLMs), and Generative AI. In this session, he will share insights from recent work by the Stanford NLP Group and Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, and explore the implications of these technologies for research, business, and society.

After the seminar, RAIsE will host networking over refreshments — an opportunity to connect with peers across academia and industry.

🎤 Title: Large Language Models and Generative AI: From the Lab to Business Applications

🧠 Summary

Language Models have been around for decades but took the world by storm in 2022 and are now frequently seen as synonymous with artificial intelligence in the popular media. What can people do with these models? How good are they at understanding and generating human language (historically the main task of the field of Natural Language Processing)? Are these models intelligent and are we on the verge of a new era of artificial super intelligence, as some prominent public voices claim? What are companies doing with these models? How will they develop? Are we at risk from super-intelligent AI systems?

👤 About the Speaker

Christopher Manning is the inaugural Thomas M. Siebel Professor in Machine Learning in the Departments of Computer Science and Linguistics at Stanford University, an Associate Director at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), and an Investing Partner at AIX Ventures. His research is on computers that can intelligently process, understand, and generate human language. Chris is the most-cited researcher within Natural Language Processing (NLP), with best paper awards at the ACL, Coling, EMNLP, and CHI conferences and two ACL Test of Time awards; a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering; and recipient of the 2024 IEEE John von Neumann Medal for his pioneering work on applying neural network or deep learning approaches to human language understanding, which led into modern Large Language Models and Generative AI. He founded the Stanford NLP group, has written widely used NLP textbooks, and teaches the popular NLP class CS224N, which is also available online. At AIX Ventures, he is involved with finding, deciding, and mentoring AI-native startups. And yes — he's also proudly Australian!