Recently, the 230th session of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Master Forum was held in the lecture hall on the first floor of Zhiyuan College. Professor Jon Kleinberg, winner of the Association of World Top Scientists Award for "Intelligent Science or Mathematics" in 2024, Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Chair Professor of Computer Science and Information Science at Cornell University, was invited to speak on "How Do Algorithms See the World? Computing and High-Stakes Decision-Making ". The forum was organized by the Graduate School of SJTU and the Shanghai World Top Scientists Development Foundation, and co-organized by the Zhiyuan College, attracted nearly 200 teachers and students.
Professor Liu Weidong, Vice President of SJTU delivered a welcome speech and extended a warm welcome and heartfelt thanks to Jon Kleinberg for his participation, and introduced Jon Kleinberg's contributions to the development of CS discipline and relevant achievements in details. Liu Weidong presented Jon Kleinberg with a Master's pulpit certificate and customized souvenir, and took a group photo together.
Jon Kleinberg began his speech with a review of the development of the internet over the past three decades and its impact on life, work and society. He then introduced the way algorithms understand the whole world through hot-spots and social networks, and explored the predictive power of algorithms in details. For example, scientists have tried to predict the path of tornado Dean, but the real landing process and the prediction have a certain deviation, which is the limitation of the algorithm to understand the world. The "eyes" of algorithms record and analyze your habits and interests to push what people want to see. This phenomenon of "information cocoon" has caused a decline in social cohesion. Jon Kleinberg used his research to draw attention to the importance of designing and using algorithms to take into account their far-reaching impact on society and potential risks. At the same time, he also analyzed the possible bias caused by the method of feature extraction and the selection of objective function in the algorithm, and shared some hot frontier directions.
During the exchange and questioning session, teachers and students actively asked questions. The CS students (class of 2022) from Zhiyuan College respectively asked questions about hot issues related to the field of artificial intelligence. Jon Kleinberg gave patient and detailed answers to each question. The atmosphere was extremely warm.
Finally, the host once again thanked Jon Kleinberg for his wonderful speech, and the event was successfully concluded with warm applauses.
After the presentation, Professor John Hopcroft, the Chief Professor of Computer Science division of Zhiyuan and Turing Award winner; Professor Xia Weiliang, Associate Dean of Zhiyuan, Professor Yu Yu, Program Director of Computer Science (John Hopcroft Class), and representatives from the cooperation and exchange office conducted further in-depth discussions with Jon Kleinberg. The two sides expressed the beautiful visions of strengthening cooperation and seeking common development in the future.
Dr. Jon Kleinberg is a professor of CS department at Cornell University and inventor of the HITS algorithm. He used to serve as the Acting Dean of the School of Computing and Information Sciences and Chair of the Department of Information Science at Cornell University. Jon mainly studies the basic theory of social network and information network analysis, and is an outstanding scholar in the field of social network analysis. In 2006, he was awarded with the Nevenlinna Prize by the International Mathematical Union. In 2009, he received the ACM Computing Award. In addition, his algorithmic textbook, Algorithm Design, co-authored with Eva Tardos, is widely considered a classic textbook in the field of algorithms and has had a profound impact on algorithmic education.