Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad is a Research Scientist at University of Washington’s Harborview Medical Center and an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Washington Bothell. He has had academic appointments at University of Washington, Center for Cognitive Science at University of Minnesota, Minnesota Population Center, and the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur. He has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. He also spent a year studying Christian Theology at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was part of the Sinai & Synapses Fellowship (2019-2020) incubated by The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. Muhammad also has worked in applied AI in industry for several startups and large corporations. He has also served as an advisor to various startups and governmental bodies on practical aspects of AI implementation. His current focus areas of research are algorithmic nudging at scale, simulation modeling, artificial intelligence, and personality emulation. His research on grief tech, especially the use of AI to simulate the deceased, has been widely acclaimed and covered in multiple documentaries. He is currently working on technical and ethical issues around the use of AI surrogates in end-of-life decision making. Email: [email protected]
by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad The television series Person of Interest posits the existence of a machine that can monitor every person’s daily activities and can then use this information to predict crimes before they happen. While such a system may be way off in the future, a system that can at least identify the identity…