De Kai
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, HKUST, Hong Kong / Distinguished Research Scholar, ICSI, Berkeley
De Kai’s cross-disciplinary work in artificial intelligence, language, music, and cognition centers on enabling cultures to interrelate. As an AI researcher, he is Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) and Distinguished Research Scholar at Berkeley's ICSI (International Computer Science Institute), and is among only 17 scientists worldwide honored by the Association for Computational Linguistics as a Founding ACL Fellow, for pioneering contributions to machine translation and machine learning foundations of systems like the Google/Yahoo/Microsoft translators. As a musician, he created one of Hong Kong’s best known transcultural soul/pop collectives, ReOrientate. In 2015, Debrett's HK 100 recognized him as one of the 100 most influential figures of Hong Kong. For his work on AI ethics and society, De Kai was one of eight inaugural members selected by Google in 2019 for its AI ethics council. He has spoken and performed for many TEDx, media, and other international venues.
