Toby Walsh keynote speaker

Toby Walsh is Chief Scientist at UNSW.ai, UNSW's new AI Institute. He is a Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW Sydney, and he is also an adjunct fellow at CSIRO Data61. He was named by the Australian newspaper as a "rock star" of Australia's digital revolution. He has been elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, a fellow of the ACM, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence. He has won the prestigious Humboldt Prize as well as the NSW Premier's Prize for Excellence in Engineering and ICT, and the ACP Research Excellence award. He has previously held research positions in England, Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Sweden. He has played a leading role at the UN and elsewhere on the campaign to ban lethal autonomous weapons (aka "killer robots"). His advocacy in this area has led to him being "banned indefinitely" from Russia.

Toby Walsh regularly appears in the media talking about the impact of AI and robotics on society. He is passionate that limits are placed on AI to ensure the public good such as with autonomous weapons. He has appeared on TV and radio stations on the ABC, BBC, Channel 7, Channel 9, Channel 10, CCTV, CNN, DW, NPR, RT, SBS, and VOA, as well as on numerous other radio stations and podcasts. He also writes frequently for print and online media. His work has appeared in the New Scientist, American Scientist, Le Scienze, Cosmos, Technology Review, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Conversation and "The Best Writing in Mathematics". He has given talks at public and trade events like CeBIT, the World Knowledge Forum, TEDx, New Scientist Live and writers festivals in Adelaide, Bendigo, Bhutan, Brisbane, Canberra, Geelong, Jaipur, Margaret River, Melbourne, Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, Sydney and elsewhere. He has been profiled by the New York Times and the Brilliant, but was even more surprised (spelt embarrassed) to have an IMBD entry and to have been made the cover story of his old school magazine.