Dr. Douglas Blank, Head of Research at Comet – an ML and AI company – will give a colloquium presentation, titled “Agentic AI: Past, Present, and Future” on Tuesday, September 16, in Education Building 115 from 12:30 – 1:30 PM.
See below for more information about our speaker.
Abstract: This talk will explore the idea of “agency” in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI), exploring how early descriptive concepts evolved into the systems we see today. Following this conceptual foundation, we’ll shift to contemporary applications, focusing on the powerful interactions between AI agents and Large Language Models (LLMs). We’ll showcase compelling real-world examples where agentic LLMs are driving innovation and then create a functional agentic system from scratch. Concluding our exploration, we’ll look ahead to the future of agentic AI. We’ll discuss emerging trends, potential challenges, and the transformative impact agentic AI could have on various fields, from scientific research to everyday life.
Speaker Bio: Professor Blank has a joint PhD in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from Indiana University, Bloomington. His thesis topic was an early exploration of training a neural network to make analogies. He has taught courses in Robotics, Cognitive Science, and Computer Science at Bryn Mawr College from which he retired in 2018. Doug and his colleagues created a research agenda that they call “Developmental Robotics,” focusing on using Deep Learning as the foundation for a mentally developing robot. In 2018 Doug joined the fledgling Comet ML startup as Head of Research, where he works with many teams, including Engineering, Customer Success, and Product Design. Today, Comet is a leader in providing open source tools (such as Opik) for researchers in Agentic AI and LLM observability.