On October 30, Joseph Sifakis, Director of the Research Institute of Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (RITAS), Distinguished Visiting Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), and recipient of the Turing Award, was a guest speaker of the SUSTech Lecture Series.

He delivered a lecture titled “Bringing AI to Autonomous Systems” to an engaged audience of faculty members and students.

Joseph Sifakis is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the French National Academy of Engineering, the Academia Europea, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In 2007, he was honored with the Turing Award by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his outstanding contributions to model checking theory and practice.

In his lecture, he explained that autonomous systems are distributed networks composed of multiple intelligent agents, each pursuing its own objectives while coordinating to achieve collective system goals.

Professor Sifakis introduced a development approach based on an agent reference architecture that characterizes autonomous behavior as a combination of independent functional components. He further explored how artificial intelligence (AI) can support the creation of AI agents and multi-agent systems, emphasizing the importance of seamless integration with traditional software. He also analyzed the current technological limitations in this field.

He concluded by noting that AI remains in its early stages of development, and realizing the vision of autonomous systems approaching human-level intelligence will require sustained effort over the long term.

During the Q&A session, Professor Sifakis engaged with the audience through in-depth discussions and exchanges on a range of topics related to AI and autonomous systems.

At the conclusion of the event, Mingwei CHEN, Dean of the College of Engineering; Qi HAO, Executive Director of RITAS; and Ke TANG, Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, presented Joseph Sifakis with a commemorative certificate in recognition of his participation in the SUSTech Lecture Series.