Erik J. Larson

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Dr.
Erik J. Larson
Born1971 (age 52–53)
Alma materUniversity of Texas at Austin
Occupation(s)Computer scientist, author
Known forArtificial intelligence, natural language processing
Notable workThe Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do
Websitehttps://erikjlarson.substack.com/

Erik J. Larson (born 1971) is an American writer, tech entrepreneur, computer scientist. He is author of The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do.[1]

He has written for The Atlantic, The Hedgehog Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Wired, and professional journals. His other projects include two DARPA-funded startups, the most recent a company that provides influence rankings for colleges and universities using an influence ranking algorithm.

Larson also publishes articles on the Substack Colligo.

Education[edit]

Larson graduated from Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington in 1994 as an All America Scholar Athlete.[2] He earned a PhD in philosophy from The University of Texas at Austin in 2009, where his dissertation was a hybrid combining work in computer science, linguistics, and philosophy.[3]

Career[edit]

In the early 2000s, Larson worked for Cycorp, home of the Cyc artificial intelligence project, on a knowledge-based approach to network security.[4] He then researched and published articles on knowledge base technology, ontology, and the Semantic Web for the Digital Media Collaboratory, a research lab founded by American businessman George Kozmetsky affiliated with the Innovation, Creativity, and Capital Institute, at The University of Texas at Austin.[5][6][7][8] He founded his first company, Knexient, in 2009 with funding from DARPA to process open source text documents using his Hierarchical Document Classifier algorithm.[9] Larson later co-founded Influence Networks after developing an algorithm to produce web-based rankings of colleges and universities with funding from DARPA.[10] The algorithm is the foundation for the AcademicInflunce.com InfluenceRanking Engine.[11][12] In 2020 Larson joined Knowledge Based Systems, Inc. in College Station, Texas as a Research Scientist specializing in natural language processing.[13]

Larson has also written articles for The Atlantic,[14][15] Los Angeles Review of Books,[16] Wired magazine,[17] and The Hedgehog Review,[18] as well as for The Metro Silicon Valley[19] and Inference: International Review of Science.[20]

Larson is a Fellow with The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia[21] and has also been a visiting researcher at The Santa Fe Institute.[22]

The Myth of Artificial Intelligence[edit]

Larson's book, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do[23] (ISBN 9780674983519 ) was published by Harvard University Press on April 6, 2021. In the book, "Larson argues that AI hype is both bad science and bad for science. A culture of invention thrives on exploring unknowns, not overselling existing methods. Inductive AI will continue to improve at narrow tasks, but if we want to make real progress, we will need to start by more fully appreciating the only true intelligence we know—our own."

In his endorsement of The Myth of Artificial Intelligence, venture capitalist Peter Thiel wrote "If you want to know about AI, read this book...it shows how a supposedly futuristic reverence for Artificial Intelligence retards progress when it denigrates our most irreplaceable resource for any future progress: our own human intelligence.”[24] The book also received endorsements from writer John Horgan[25] and CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence Oren Etzioni. It has been reviewed for The Critic,[26] Engadget,[27] Fast Company,[28] The Financial Times,[29] Inside Story,[30] The New Atlantis,[31] The New York Review of Books,[32] Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation,[33] R&A Enterprise Architecture,[34] Tech Monitor,[35] TechTalks,[36] The Times Literary Supplement,[37] Towards Data Science,[38] The Village Voice,[39] The Wall Street Journal,[40] and The Wire India.[41] Larson has also performed several media interviews and made conference appearances in relation to the book, such as on the Lawfare[42] and Current Affairs[43] podcasts, and COSM 2021.[44]

The Return[edit]

In August 2023, Larson launched Colligo on Substack to "show the problems with our data-driven world and show or assemble a richer humanistic picture."[45] On the site, Larson revealed he "was awarded a two-year grant by the Thiel Foundation to work on a second book."[46] The title of his forthcoming book is The Return: Why the 21st Century Looks Like the Past (so far), Not the Future We Wanted. An article previewing The Return was published as "Back to the Fifties: Reassessing Technological and Political Progress" in the American Affairs Journal.[47] Larson also discussed the project on the Keen On show.[48]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Larson, Erik J. (2021). The myth of artificial intelligence: why computers can't think the way we do. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-98351-9.
  2. ^ "Alumni Magazine Spring 1994". Whitworth Alumni Magazine. January 1, 1994.
  3. ^ Larson, Erik John (December 2009). Primary semantic type labeling in monologue discourse using a hierarchical classification approach (Thesis). hdl:2152/ETD-UT-2009-12-636.
  4. ^ "A knowledge-based approach to network security: Applying Cyc in the domain of network risk assessment". Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence - Volume 3. IAAI'05. July 9, 2005. pp. 1563–1568. ISBN 978-1-57735-236-5.
  5. ^ "CEUR-WS.org/Vol-101 – Knowledge Markup and Semantic Annotation (Semannot-2003)". ceur-ws.org. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  6. ^ Larson, Erik; Hughes, Todd (2005). "Relational Recognition for Information Extraction in Free Text Documents" (PDF). Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Spring Symposium. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.541.9904.
  7. ^ Asher, Nicholas; Denis, P.; Kuhn, Jonas; Larson, Erik; McCready, E.; Palmer, Alexis; Reese, Brian; Wang, Linton. "Extracting and Using Discourse Structure to Resolve Anaphoric Dependencies : Combining Logico-Semantic and Statistical Approaches". CiteSeerX 10.1.1.109.1989. S2CID 17158972. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  8. ^ Woelk, D.; Larson, Erik; Allen, Wayne; Taank, Sumit (2003). "Focused Knowledge Bases for Multi-Disciplinary, Multi-Sector Decision Making". CiteSeerX 10.1.1.201.2760. S2CID 16318694. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  9. ^ "KNEXIENT | SBIR.gov". www.sbir.gov. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  10. ^ "Home". influencenetworks.com.
  11. ^ "The Inspiration for Academic Influence | Interview with Erik Larson | Academic Influence". academicinfluence.com. 28 April 2021. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  12. ^ AcademicInfluence.com. "AcademicInfluence.com Ranks the Top Colleges & Universities in the U.S. for 2021". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  13. ^ "List of Knowledge Based Systems, Inc. employees". SignalHire. Retrieved 2022-10-30.
  14. ^ Larson, Erik (May 14, 2015). "Questioning the Hype About Artificial Intelligence". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  15. ^ Larson, Erik (April 26, 2019). "When Making Things Better Only Makes Them Worse". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  16. ^ Mankin, Keith P.; Simon, Ed; Larson, Erik J.; Fletcher, Angus (September 26, 2021). "What Is Literature For?: A Symposium on Angus Fletcher's "Wonderworks"". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2021-10-23.
  17. ^ Fletcher, Angus; Larson, Erik. "Optimizing Machines Is Perilous. Consider 'Creatively Adequate' AI". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  18. ^ "Twenty Five Years After Imagined Worlds, What World Are We Living In?". THR Web Features. 2022-10-25. Retrieved 2022-10-30.
  19. ^ "2012 June 27 | Metro Silicon Valley". www.metrosiliconvalley.com. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  20. ^ Larson, Erik (July 13, 2015). "Big Neuroscience". Inference: International Review of Science. 1 (3). doi:10.37282/991819.15.16.
  21. ^ "Erik J. Larson". Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Retrieved 2023-09-06.[permanent dead link]
  22. ^ Larson, Erik J. (2023-08-24). "Welcome to Colligo". Colligo. Retrieved 2023-09-06.
  23. ^ Larson, Erik J. (2021). The myth of artificial intelligence: why computers can't think the way we do. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-98351-9.
  24. ^ "The Myth of Artificial Intelligence". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  25. ^ Horgan, John. "Will Artificial Intelligence Ever Live Up to Its Hype?". Scientific American. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  26. ^ "The limits of logic | Kit Wilson". The Critic Magazine. January 26, 2022. Retrieved 2022-03-02.
  27. ^ "Hitting the Books: Is the hunt for technological supremacy harming our collective humanity?". Engadget. May 2021. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  28. ^ Larson, Erik J. (May 12, 2021). "Silicon Valley has been taken over by 'technological kitsch'". Fast Company. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  29. ^ Thornhill, John (March 25, 2021). "The delusions of techno-futurists who ask: crisis, what crisis?". The Financial Times. Retrieved 2021-09-15.
  30. ^ "Ghosts in the machine". Inside Story. August 5, 2021. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  31. ^ "Why We Still Don't Have True AI". The New Atlantis. Retrieved 2021-09-27.
  32. ^ Halpern, Sue. "The Human Costs of AI". New York Review of Books. Retrieved 2021-10-23.
  33. ^ "Erik J. Larson, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do – Prometheus". Retrieved 2022-12-08.
  34. ^ Wierda, Gerben (August 21, 2021). "AI is a Myth, says AI-researcher and engineer Erik Larson". R&A Enterprise Architecture. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  35. ^ Clarke, Laurie (May 12, 2021). "Forget the hype, we've no idea how to reach human-like AI". Tech Monitor. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  36. ^ Dickson, Ben (September 20, 2021). "Abductive inference: The blind spot of artificial intelligence". TechTalks. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  37. ^ "The Myth of Artificial Intelligence by Erik J. Larson review: What the human mind can do that the man-made one can't". TLS. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  38. ^ Chugg, Ben (June 9, 2021). "The False Philosophy Plaguing AI". Medium. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  39. ^ Ascend, Amir Bakian / Partner content from (2023-07-05). "How Will AI Affect White Collar Management Jobs?". The Village Voice. Retrieved 2023-09-06.
  40. ^ Shaywitz, David A. (May 21, 2021). "Big Brains: New Books on Artificial Intelligence". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  41. ^ Kulkarni, Viraj (June 1, 2021). "In Erik Larson's New Book, a Cogent Case Against the Inevitability of True AI". The Wire Science. Retrieved 2021-09-16.
  42. ^ "The Lawfare Podcast: The Myth of Artificial Intelligence". Lawfare. March 31, 2021. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  43. ^ "Why You Don't Need To Worry About "Superintelligent AI" Destroying The World (But Artificial Intelligence Is Still Scary)". September 30, 2022.
  44. ^ The Myth of Artificial Intelligence with Erik Larson at COSM 2021, retrieved 2023-03-19
  45. ^ Larson, Erik J. (2023-09-05). "Colligo | Erik J Larson | Substack". erikjlarson.substack.com. Retrieved 2023-09-06.
  46. ^ Larson, Erik J. (2023-08-24). "Welcome to Colligo". Colligo. Retrieved 2023-09-06.
  47. ^ Larson, Erik J. (2023-08-20). "Back to the Fifties: Reassessing Technological and Political Progress". American Affairs Journal. Retrieved 2023-09-06.
  48. ^ Keen, Andrew (October 8, 2023). "The Myth of Progress: Erik J. Larson on Silicon Valley's failure to change anything of any significance since the Fifties". Keen On.
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