Barbara J. Grosz (born July 21, 1948) is an American computer scientist and the Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences at Harvard University. She has made seminal contributions to the fields of natural language processing and multi-agent systems, and is a co-founder of the Embedded EthiCS programme at Harvard, which integrates ethics into computer science education. Grosz was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2008 for her pioneering research in natural language communication between humans and computers and its application to human-computer interaction.
Education
Grosz earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Cornell University in 1969. She then pursued graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received a master's degree in computer science in 1971 and a doctoral degree in 1977. Her early academic training laid the foundation for her later interdisciplinary work in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.
Career
Grosz has held leadership roles at several interdisciplinary institutions and has been a strong advocate for women in science. From 2007 to 2011, she served as interim dean and then dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Earlier, from 2001 to 2007, she was the institute's first dean of science, where she designed and built its science program. She currently serves on the Science Board and Science Steering Committee at the Santa Fe Institute.
At Harvard, Grosz was instrumental in making the university one of the first to integrate philosophy across computer science courses. In 2019, she co-authored the paper "Embedded EthiCS: Integrating Ethics Across CS Education," which emphasized the importance of embedding ethical reasoning into computer science curricula. This work led to the creation of the Embedded EthiCS programme, co-founded with philosopher Alison Simmons, which embeds ethics lessons into computer science courses.
Memberships and Awards
Grosz has been recognized by numerous prestigious organizations. She is a member of the American Philosophical Society (2003), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004), and the National Academy of Engineering (2008). She is also a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) (1990), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1990), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) (2004).
In 1993, Grosz became the first woman president of the AAAI. She serves on the executive committee and is a former trustee of the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence, and she serves on the council of the American Philosophical Society. In 2008, she received the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award for "fundamental contributions to research in natural language processing and in multi-agent systems, for her leadership in the field of artificial intelligence, and for her role in the establishment and leadership of interdisciplinary institutions." In 2014, she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2015, she received the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence for her pioneering research in natural language processing and in theories and applications of multiagent collaboration. In 2017, she received the Association for Computational Linguistics Lifetime Achievement Award.
Research
Grosz specializes in natural language processing and multi-agent systems. She developed some of the earliest computer dialogue systems and established the research field of computational modeling of discourse. Her work on models of collaboration helped establish that field and provides the framework for several collaborative multi-agent and human-computer interface systems.
Grosz has developed a theory of discourse structure that specifies how discourse interpretation depends on interactions among speaker intentions, attentional state, and linguistic form. She has been using this theory to study the use of intonation to convey information about discourse structure, for instance how tones demark, in spoken language, some of the structure that paragraphs and parentheses indicate in written language.
Her research has had a lasting impact on the field of artificial intelligence, influencing subsequent work in dialogue systems, computational linguistics, and multi-agent coordination. Her contributions are often cited in the context of modern developments in Artificial intelligence and Machine learning, though her foundational work predates the recent surge in Deep learning and Neural network approaches.
Books and Reports
Grosz contributed a chapter to the 2018 book Architects of Intelligence: The Truth About AI from the People Building It by American futurist Martin Ford. She also chaired the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee that produced the 2022 report Fostering Responsible Computing Research: Foundations and Practices. This report addresses the ethical and societal implications of computing research, aligning with her long-standing interest in embedding ethics into technology education.
Legacy and Influence
Grosz's work has not only advanced the technical fields of natural language processing and multi-agent systems but has also shaped how computer science is taught. Her advocacy for integrating ethics into computer science curricula has influenced many institutions beyond Harvard. As a pioneer in her field, she has served as a role model for women in science, and her leadership roles at the Radcliffe Institute and AAAI have helped promote diversity and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Her research continues to be relevant in the era of large language models and generative AI, as many of the challenges in discourse understanding and multi-agent coordination remain central to modern AI systems. Grosz's emphasis on the importance of ethical reasoning in AI development is particularly pertinent as the field grapples with the societal impacts of autonomous systems.
References
- Grosz, B. J., & Simmons, A. (2019). Embedded EthiCS: Integrating Ethics Across CS Education. Communications of the ACM.
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2022). Fostering Responsible Computing Research: Foundations and Practices. The National Academies Press.
- Ford, M. (2018). Architects of Intelligence: The Truth About AI from the People Building It. Packt Publishing.