Abstract: The talk will survey the past and future of information retrieval from my own idiosyncratic perspective. I will draw on my current role at the National Science Foundation, a long time funder of this line of research, as well as my prior experience working in the group that developed the earliest word-embedding approach. In many ways, and perhaps not shockingly, the trajectory of information retrieval has tracked the trajectory of information technology more generally. The current historical moment that we're in---trying to absorb and channel the lessons of large language models---offers a profound opportunity to envision the future of the field and of computing and information more generally.
Bio: Michael L. Littman is currently serving as Division Director for Information and Intelligent Systems at the National Science Foundation. The division is home to the programs and program officers that support researchers in artificial intelligence, human-centered computing, data management, and assistive technologies, as well as those exploring the impact of intelligent information systems on society. Littman is also University Professor of Computer Science at Brown University, where he studies machine learning and decision-making under uncertainty. He has earned multiple university-level awards for teaching and his research has been recognized with three best-paper awards and three influential paper awards. Littman is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery.