Showing articles associated with Luca Bertinetto

Areas of interest

I am interested in designing machine learning algorithms able to learn new concepts quickly and with a small amount of training data.

What makes Oxford such a good place to work in AI?

First and foremost, Oxford is a great place to study and work, in general. It offers the curious mind endless opportunities to learn new things and to engage in meaningful conversations about any subject at all.  

Oxford is good for working on AI because many early advances in the field were done here. This meant that some of the leading researchers were educated here, and have gone on to forge fruitful relationships with other leading universities and companies around the world. Once such a successful programme has been established, it self-perpetuates by attracting more talent as new students and professors.

What is the biggest opportunity or challenge in AI?

AI offers a set of powerful tools that can positively impact our lives in many ways. For example, it has the potential to push the boundaries forward in applications such as precision medicine, drug discovery and self-driving cars. 

At the same time, it is easy to find scenarios in which the deployment of AI is not beneficial for the community. For instance, it may be detrimental to our intellectual freedom that our preferences and behaviours can be exploited to influence our choices, with little to no transparency of the methods or the beneficiaries. Also, given the current levels of competition, researchers and engineers working on AI are under tremendous pressure to deliver new and exciting results, quickly. Perhaps it would be better if the whole field could slow down and consider how to channel its efforts towards goals that are clearly beneficial to society.