InspiredResearch Summer 2016 Issue 8 News from the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford TheThe futurefuture ofof ArtificialArtificial IntelligenceIntelligence Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis gives Strachey Lecture – p26 In search of the New Forest cicada: Developing new tools for acoustic ecology – p6 Preventing lunchtime attacks: Fighting insider threats with eye movement biometrics – p12 Robots and the moral maze: Towards a code of ethics for artificial intelligence – p23 CompSciOxford DepartmentOfComputerScienceUniversityOfOxford Inspired Research Letter from the is a twice-yearly newsletter published by the Department of Computer Science at the University Head of Department of Oxford. If you would like to learn more One of the many rewards of academic life at Oxford is the constant about anything you read in these stream of incredible academic speakers that pass through our doors. A pages, please get in touch: quick look at our forthcoming seminar series tells me that in the coming [email protected] week, I can hear about ‘The expressiveness of decidable fixpoint logics’, ‘Fighting modern cyber criminals’, and ‘Semantic alignment for agent To subscribe to future issues, interactions’. This is not a phenomenon restricted to the Department e-mail: [email protected] of Computer Science, of course: Oxford is one of the world’s great To download previous issues, visit intellectual meeting places, and a visit to Oxford is very like a pilgrimage www.cs.ox.ac.uk/inspiredresearch for most academics. Editorial board Of all the remarkable speakers I have had the pleasure to see at Oxford, Suzanna Marsh (Editor) none has been more remarkable than Demis Hassabis, who gave the Hilary Term Strachey Lecture in February 2016 (see page 26). Demis is a Kiri Walden (Sub-Editor) founder and CEO of DeepMind, the London-based artificial intelligence Suvarna Designs (Designer) company that was acquired by Google in 2014 for $400m. We invited Demis to give this lecture a year ago, and had a strong hunch that it Benjamin Neal was going to be a popular event. In anticipation of this, and thanks to Daniel Marsden generous financial support from Oxford Asset Management, we were Daniel Neville able to book Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre for the lecture, with Dima Pasechnik a reception afterwards in the Divinity School. The stage was set for a special occasion. However, nothing prepared us for the deluge of interest Emma Dunlop that Demis’s lecture generated. All 800 tickets were taken within 48 hours Faris Abou-Saleh of release, and we were so overwhelmed by pleas for additional tickets Helena Webb that we booked another 300-seat lecture theatre and had the event live Jason Nurse streamed there. Martha Lewis On the day, Demis arrived complete with a camera crew making a film Maureen York of his life, and I had the very odd experience of walking through Oxford Peter Jeavons with Demis making smalltalk, while a camera crew filmed us from across Sarah Baldwin the road. (A PhD in Computer Science doesn’t prepare you for things like Seyyed Shah this…) The lecture itself was a joy – a model of what a Strachey Lecture should be, pitched perfectly, with plenty of good humour and much Shoshannah Holdom food for thought. So, you are probably asking yourself, why all the fuss? Thomas Lukasiewicz Well, DeepMind’s core technology is deep learning – probably the most Will Smith active research area in Computer Science at present. Deep learning has made huge progress over the past decade, and no clearer evidence of this is provided by the fact that, just a week after Demis’s Oxford lecture, Contributors DeepMind triumphed in a series of matches in which a self-taught AI Alex Kavvos Monica Wilson programme comprehensively defeated one of the world’s best Go players. Alex Rogers Nathan Walk The series of matches made headlines across the globe. With Demis Andrew Martin Niel de Beaudrap giving his Oxford lecture just a week before the Go tournament, everyone present at the lecture felt they were witnessing history in the making. And Bushra AlAhmadi Paula Boddington indeed, they were. David Gavaghan Reuben Binns David Hobbs Sam Littley In other exciting news, I’m delighted to be able to Helena Webb Sharon Lloyd say that Sir Jonathan Ive, head of design at Apple, Ivan Martinovic Shimon Whiteson Inc., will receive an honorary degree at the annual Jassim Happa Stephen Pulman encaenia event in June (page 3). Sir Jonathan is Katherine Fletcher Troy Astarte probably the most influential industrial designer of Laura Jones Ursula Martin the past 50 years: amongst other things, he designed Lucy Crittenden the iPad and iPhone. He designed the iPod! Matty Hoban Michael Wooldridge Professor Michael Wooldridge May 2016 2 Inspired Research: News from the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford NEWS Apple’s Chief Design for a range of Apple products, including the ground-breaking News in brief Officer Sir Jonathan original iMac in the late 1990s, the Ive to receive iPod, and the iPhone. Apart from being commercially successful on honorary degree a truly global scale, his trailblazing designs have dramatically influenced not just the look and feel of these We are delighted to announce that devices, but the way we think Sir Jonathan Ive, the Chief Design about and interact with technology Officer at Apple, Inc., will receive an itself. Perhaps the best way we can honorary degree from the University summarise Sir Jonathan’s influence of Oxford at the University’s annual would be to point out that most Encaenia ceremony, this year being people reading this announcement DPhil student Elizabeth Phillips has held on 22 June 2016. online will do so on a device either been selected as the only student designed or directly influenced by alongside nine UK government Sir Jonathan’s nomination from the him. officials to participate in a US Department of Computer Science government-sponsored exchange recognises his iconic, hugely We very much look forward to programme to identify the top influential, and incredibly successful welcoming Sir Jonathan to Oxford ten leaders in UK Cyber Security. contributions to industrial design. in June. Participants were selected by Sir Jonathan was the chief designer the US Department of State and the US Embassy in London. The programme enables participants to learn about US efforts to protect digital infrastructure, ensure free flow of information, security and privacy of data, and the integrity of networks. Elizabeth met President Obama at the ‘Town Hall’ he hosted in London in April. Oxford involved explore issues in privacy, ethics, of our daily lives will be connected, trust, reliability, acceptability, and in one way or another, to the digital in new Internet security (known as PETRAS). world. Physical objects and devices of Things (IoT) will be able to interact with each The project is part of IoTUK, an other, ourselves, and the wider Research Hub integrated £40 million initiative virtual world. But, before this can between government, industry, happen, there must be trust and the research community and the confidence in how the Internet Department of Computer Science public sector to help advance UK of Things works, its security and academics, Professors Andrew global leadership in the IoT and its resilience. By harnessing our Martin, Sadie Creese and Kasper increase adoption of high quality world-leading research excellence Rasmussen are involved in the IoT technologies and services by this PETRAS research hub newly announced £23 million businesses and the public sector in will accelerate IoT technology Internet of Things (IoT) Research the UK, benefiting citizens. The hub innovation and bring benefit[s] to Hub. They have been working with will draw in substantial support from society and business.’ fellow Oxford Professors, Luciano over 47 partners from industry and Floridi of the Oxford Internet the public sector. Institute and David De Roure of the Oxford e-Research Centre. Professor Philip Nelson, the Engineering Physical and Live Oxford is one of a consortium of Sciences Research Council’s nine UK universities which will (EPSRC) Chief Executive, said, ‘In work over a three-year period to the not too distant future almost all www.cs.ox.ac.uk Issue 8 Summer 2016 3 NEWS News in brief Professor Bill Roscoe wins MPLS Oxford climbed to top spot in The Sunday Times University Lifetime Award Guide 2016 league table for Computer Science. It also took Professor Bill Roscoe has been third place (best in the UK) in the given a lifetime award by the Oxford QS World University Rankings University Mathematical, Physical 2016 for Computer Science and and Life Sciences Division for Information Systems. In the Times external engagement and promoting Higher Education World University impact. Rankings Oxford has consolidated its position as one of the world’s The former Head of Department has top universities. Overall Oxford been recognised for his pioneering was the top European University work applying formal verification in the rankings (2nd in the world), tools in industry since the late 1980s, and in subject-specific tables for including the invention of the FDR Engineering and Technology the Software Verification Tool. University was rated as 2nd in theoretical research. Furthermore, Europe and 6th in the world. He says of his award, ‘It has been interaction with these users has been wonderful to see so many real-world a regular source of inspiration for my The Alan Turing Institute (ATI) held users of what originally seemed like research: a real virtuous circle!’ a symposium on reproducibility for data-intensive research. Reproducibility is both a technical Degree application numbers climb and a socio-cultural issue, requiring new metadata systems, technical Application figures for the Oxford undergraduate Computer Science degree architectures, workflows and programmes have risen for the 9th consecutive year.