The Next Wave: Out of the AI Winter & Into the Neuro-Symbolic Future with Yoav Shoham

In the latest episode of “The Next Wave,” Young Sohn speaks with entrepreneur and professor Yoav Shoham – Co-founder & CEO of AI21 Labs. The two visionaries discuss AI21 Labs – which Young’s Walden Catalyst is an investor in – and its solutions, the history and future of artificial intelligence (AI), and Yoav’s numerous endeavors like WeCode.

While many consider AI a new technology, Young and Yoav discuss how the technology’s origins lie in the 80’s before we moved into an “AI winter” in the 90’s. Since the AI winter, AI has made great strides from Machine Learning to Natural Language Processing. The latter being the technology implemented by Yoav & AI21 Labs to power their solutions – Wordtune & Wordtune Read. Young, an avid user of both, and Yoav discuss the differences and nuances between Wordtune and Grammarly before discussing the future of AI technology – neuro-symbolic AI. Yoav is a firm believer in helping more of the population pursue careers in STEM. The pair finished their discussion with WeCode, a nonprofit initiative to train high-quality programmers from disadvantaged populations, and Yoav’s academic career.

Yoav Shoham is professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University. A leading AI expert, Prof. Shoham is Fellow of AAAI, ACM and the Game Theory Society. Among his awards are the IJCAI Research Excellence Award, the AAAI/ACM Allen Newell Award, and the ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award. His online Game Theory course has been watched by close to a million people. Prof. Shoham has founded several AI companies, including TradingDynamics (acquired by Ariba), Katango and Timeful (both acquired by Google), and AI21 Labs. Prof. Shoham also chairs the AI Index initiative, which tracks global AI activity and progress, and WeCode.