Cary Library: How AI Remembers, Imagines, and Creates
September 1 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Free- This event has passed.
Event Registration: https://youthsteaminitiative.org/haixunwangtalk.html
How AI Remembers, Imagines, and Creates
Tuesday, September 1 7:00—8:30 PM
Large Meeting RoomCary Memorial Library1874 Massachusetts Avenue, Lexington, MA, 02420
How do people use memories to imagine something new—and can AI do the same?
In this talk, Dr. Haixun Wang will explain, in everyday language, how memory, imagination, and creativity may be connected. People often create new ideas by recognizing patterns in past experiences and applying them in new situations. Modern AI systems attempt something similar, but they still struggle to produce stories and ideas with the depth, flexibility, and originality of human creativity.
Using familiar examples, Dr. Wang will discuss how AI retrieves information, makes analogies, and generates new content. He will also explore why AI-generated writing can sometimes feel repetitive or flat, and how future AI systems and agents might become more thoughtful, creative, and useful.
No technical background is required. The talk is intended for anyone interested in how AI works and how it may shape the future of human creativity.
Attendance is on a first-come basis. Registering below allows us to plan for headcount and keep you updated in case of any changes.
About our speaker:
Haixun Wang is an ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin, a trustee on the board of VLDB, and an affiliate professor at the University of Washington. He is currently the VP of Engineering and Head of AI at EvenUp, where he focuses on leveraging LLMs and generative AI for legal and medical document understanding and generation, building Copilot-like support for lawyers, and advancing litigation workflows. Prior to EvenUp, he held leadership roles in AI, applied science, NLP, and knowledge bases at Instacart, WeWork, Amazon, and Meta. Before that, he was a researcher in the labs of Microsoft, Google, and IBM. Dr. Wang has published over 200 research papers in top international journals and conference proceedings. His work has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the 10-Year ICDE Influential Paper Award (2024), the ICDE Best Paper Award (2015), the ICDM 10-Year Best Paper Award (2013), and the Best Paper Award at ER (2009).
Presented in partnership with the Youth STEAM Initiative (YSI ) and UMass Boston.
YSI is a nonprofit organization 5013c founded by Wei Ding during the Covid pandemic to provide free mentorship to students and free computational and arts services to our local communities.
This program is made possible by the generous donors to the Cary Library Foundation.
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