I’m an entrepreneur, educator and researcher currently working with a number of teams and projects aimed at helping society through artificial intelligence technologies.
My interest in AI was triggered in the mid-1980’s when I snuck into Marvin Minsky’s MIT class lectures. Minsky was an effervescent lecturer and I was captivated by his ideas about “machines that can understand stories.”
It was also at MIT that I first met fellow Conviserians Sherman Teichman and Peter Droege, who have since shared my decades-long interest in the impact of technology on social networking, public policy, and learning.
I received a Master’s from the Media Lab at MIT, where my research focused on the transition from analog to digital media and the ways digital technologies influence how we make and share messages.
From MIT I moved to Apple, where I spent 5 years leading a new product team tasked with evolving the Macintosh operating system from support of static text and still images to dynamic streaming of interactive video, audio, and animation. These capabilities enabled new “media rich” applications like video editing, music production, and interactive learning.
I’m now an adjunct faculty member at New York University, teaching “AI and Communication” about the impact of AI on the creation and sharing of information, beliefs, art, and ideas. I also serve as the CEO of Tickr, a startup building AI software tools and advising organizations on beneficial uses of AI.
Some current projects:
Wordloop uses Natural Language Processing to analyze language samples and use the resulting outputs to enhance existing language. For example, Wordloop can be used to analyze an individual primary-school student’s writing and use that analysis to refactor existing curricula and assignments into a hyper-personalized 1:1 curriculum tailored to that student’s cognitive abilities, language skills, and personal communication style.
Top Model is an online public forum where anyone can upload AI-driven predictive models for competition and scoring in real time. The models predict causality and outcomes across topics like climate change, financial resilience, social stability, and public health. Ratings of model accuracy will be displayed live, 24/7, to a global audience. Model-makers retain ownership of their models and the competition is open to all. Top Model combines the power of AI-driven predictive analytics with crowdsourcing to drive discovery of new solutions to critical global issues.
StoryLab (in conjunction with the Covid 19 Impact Project at New York University). StoryLab applies Natural Language Processing techniques to oral histories, from the earliest examples to the present. Our goal is to “mine” the oral histories to discover how social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances of individual lives have impacted overall well-being, both during and after crisis events. Our hope is to then use our findings to inform policy making in ways that increase social equity and resilience in future crisis situations (pandemics, natural disasters, and economic dislocation) with a particular focus on at-risk and disadvantaged groups.
Prosocial Partners is an informal group of researchers, designers, artists, and technologists that pursue projects of interest relating to socially beneficial uses of AI. Currently, we are developing the “Prosocial Prize” for essays envisioning a realistic and positive future for AI technology in healthcare, economics, public policy, and the arts.
We are constantly on the lookout for high-impact projects. Feel free to contact me at tyler@prosocial.partners.
