Speaker:

Chenhao Tan, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Data Science, University of Chicago

Title:

Science in the Age of AI

Abstract:

As AI becomes increasingly capable of following instructions and conducting analyses, I believe that scientists will increasingly play the role of selector and evaluator. In this talk, I will share our recent advances in AI-enabled hypothesis generation and research evaluation. Rather than treating AI hallucinations as obstacles to eliminate, we leverage data and literature to steer AI creativity toward generating effective hypotheses. I will also introduce HypoBench, a dedicated benchmark for evaluating hypothesis generation, which reveals significant room for potential improvement of current AI models. Finally, I will present ongoing work that formalizes the evaluation of research outcomes beyond the paper itself and use AI to conduct robust evaluation of research evaluation, with a case study on mechanistic interpretability.

Speaker Bio:

Chenhao Tan is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Data Science at the University of Chicago, and directs the Chicago Human+AI Lab. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University and dual bachelor's degrees in computer science and economics from Tsinghua University. His research focuses on human-centered AI, communication & intelligence, AI & Scientific Discovery, and AI alignment. His work has been covered by major news media outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He also won a Sloan research fellowship, an NSF CAREER award, an NSF CRII award, a Google research scholar award, research awards from Amazon, IBM, JP Morgan, and Salesforce, a Facebook fellowship, and a Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges award.

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/92797125283
PW: NICO26

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.