Selmer Bringsjord is the founding Director of the Rensselaer AI & Reasoning Laboratory at RPI, devoted to the science and engineering of logic-based AI, CogSci, and robotics. He is Professor of: Logic & Philosophy; Computer Science; Cognitive Science; and Management & Technology. Bringsjord specializes in the building of robust AI systems and cognitive robots, and at the same time the logical/mathematical and philosophical foundations of AI (as well as that of CompSci & CogSci). Funding for his R&D has come from the Luce Foundation, NSF, the Templeton Foundation, AT&T, IBM, Apple, AFRL, ARDA/DTO/ IARPA, ONR, DARPA, AFOSR, and other sponsors (with funding with him as PI or Co-PI totaling over $28M). Bringsjord has consulted to and advised many companies and agencies in the realm of intelligent systems, and continues to do so; in this realm he has six patents and three pending. Bringsjord is widely known for bringing AI and cognitive robotics to the public; two examples include his OLCSU-relevant TEDx talk "Could a Robot be a Bona Fide Hero?", and --- with crucial help from his students --- a demonstration of puzzle-solving self-consciousness in robots watched by millions. Bringsjord has long held that (i) human persons have a level of intelligence beyond the reach of Turing-level computing machines, but (ii) can nonetheless be eliminated by such machines, if they are sufficiently powerful, autonomous, and intelligent. Naveen Sundar Govindarajulu is an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) researcher and engineer with research experience in various subfields of AI, computational logic, and ML. Recent such experience includes (1) building autonomous systems that reason with ethical principles; (2) making machine learning models fairer; and (3) combining reasoning systems with learning systems. He has performed fundamental research in a wide range of research labs. His experience includes work on deep-learning systems at Meta Platforms, ML-based time-series forecasting at Workday, natural-language processing research at Yahoo Research, fraud detection at Wepay, image recognition at HP Labs, and an experimental fingerprint-recognition system for the Indian Space Research Organization. Naveen has also worked briefly as a Visiting Scholar on modeling fundamental physics problems at the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research. In addition to research in AI and ML, his background also includes building and deploying AI and ML systems in real-world applications with rigorous performance requirements. He obtained his PhD in computer science from RPI, partly sponsored by the International Fulbright Science and Technology Scholarship. He also has an MSc in physics and BE in electrical and electronics engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (BITS-Pilani). John Licato is Associate Professor in the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, and Computing, and Director of the Advancing Machine and Human Reasoning (AMHR) Lab at the University of South Florida, in Tampa, FL. He earned his PhD in Computer Science in 2015 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute under the supervision of Selmer Bringsjord. He is a 2017 awardee of the AFOSR Young Investigator’s Program (YIP) grant. His research interests lie in the intersection of reasoning, cognitive science, logic, and natural-language processing (NLP). The mission of Dr. Licato’s AMHR lab is to not only make computers better at reasoning, but to help people reason better, as well. Thus, his lab develops algorithms for automated reasoning in formal-logic domains, but also studies ways to automatically process informal reasoning --- e.g., the kinds of arguments made by normal people in casual discussions, whether in-person or online. This requires extensive use of state-of-the-art techniques in NLP. Licato has also worked extensively in the area of cognitive modeling, focusing particularly on developmental models of cognition. Understanding how (some) adults are able to perform amazing feats of creativity and reasoning may require that we understand how minds develop in the first place. Current dominant models in AI, however, fail at replicating the kinds of brilliant insights displayed by children starting at very young ages. Dr. Licato and his lab are devoted to figuring out why this is the case. Alexander Bringsjord has been developing, with crucial help from collaborators, innovative AI for over 20 years. He has co-founded multiple AI businesses on the strength of numerous active platforms (including the one central to the present OLCSU book: HyperSlate®) and patents. Alexander spent a decade in industry providing services to Fortune-500 companies, first for PwC as Associate & Senior Associate, then for Deloitte as a Manager; this work was fundamentally declarative/logic-based. He now actively lectures and consults in accounting & management, AI, entrepreneurship, and philosophy of business. Alexander seeks to refine and extend the logicist work of S Bringsjord; the present book, and its call to logic-based action in the face of The PAID Problem, is a case in point. Along the same line, but future-oriented, Alexander currently spends most conscious moments (perhaps some subconscious ones too) working toward endowing statistical ML systems that rely nearly exclusively on numerical data --- e.g., LLMs and LRMs --- with verifiable, logic-based automated-reasoning and automated-decision-making capability. Bringsjord holds a BS Dual Major in Business & Philosophy from RPI, an MS in Accounting from The University at Albany, and is currently pursuing a PhD at RPI in Management & Technology. His doctoral research weaves AI together with economics, entrepreneurship, fintech, innovation, and philosophy of business; his expected graduation is May 2028. Alexander has been a ski patroller for over 20 years at Jiminy Peak in Hancock, Massachusetts, and is confident no one can beat him in a downhill ski race with a toboggan. Were he to lose such a race, he would resort to revenge in golf, which he pursues passionately.
