January 17th, 12pm EST
Dr. Moshe Y. Vardi is a University Professor and the George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University, known for his significant contributions in logic and computation.
Talk Highlights: How to Be an Ethical Technologist
Dr. Vardi traces the twin tsunamis launched in 1981 — the IBM PC and Reaganomics — showing how computing and neoliberalism together produced economic inequality, cognitive filter bubbles, and political polarization. He argues that surveillance capitalism, addiction-by-design social media, and unchecked corporate power have made technologists complicit in societal harm, and calls on computer scientists to commit to consistently supporting the public good through a 'Lovelace Oath' and mandatory ethics education.
Key Takeaways
- Mega-corporations are already the 'superintelligence' we should fear — they concentrate the talent of many people toward a single goal of profit maximization, functioning exactly like Bostrom's paperclip maximizer.
- Internal corporate ethics efforts have proven to be an 'utter failure' — whistleblowers get pushed out, responsible-technology boards get sidelined, and nonprofit governance structures get overridden by investors. Only external regulation can effectively constrain corporate behavior.
- The combination of surveillance capitalism and large language models creates an imminent threat of hyper-personalized persuasion — individually tailored phishing and persuasive chatbots that exploit personal data at unprecedented scale.
Notable Quotes
“We thought we were the Rebel Alliance. Now computing is not the rebels anymore — we are the Empire, and we have to deal with the responsibility that this creates.”
“Today's technology is taking advantage of our Paleolithic emotions and medieval institutions.”
Biography +
Moshe Vardi
Early Life and Education
Moshe Ya'akov Vardi, born in 1954 in Israel, is a distinguished computer scientist whose career has been devoted to the intersection of logic and computation. He completed his undergraduate studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, then earned his Master of Science degree from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Vardi went on to receive his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1981 under the supervision of Catriel Beeri, laying the groundwork for a research career that would span over four decades and produce more than 700 technical papers.
Career and Contributions
IBM Research and Stanford
Following his doctoral studies, Vardi held a postdoctoral research position at Stanford University before joining IBM Research, where he made significant early contributions to database theory, finite model theory, and model checking. His work during this period helped establish foundational results in the application of mathematical logic to computer science problems.
Rice University
In 1993, Vardi joined Rice University, where he served as chair of the computer science department from 1994 to 2002. He currently holds the title of Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering. At Rice, Vardi has continued his prolific research while also becoming a prominent voice in discussions about the societal impact of computing, including AI, automation, and the responsibilities of computing professionals.
Awards and Honors
- 2000: Awarded the Godel Prize; named ACM Fellow
- 2005: Awarded the Paris Kanellakis Award
- 2011: Awarded the Harry H. Goode Memorial Award
- 2015: Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
- 2021: Awarded the Knuth Prize
- Elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society and member of Academia Europaea
Career Timeline +
Career Timeline
- 1954: Born in Israel
- 1981: Earned Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- Early 1980s: Postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University
- 1980s-1993: Researcher at IBM Research
- 1993: Joined Rice University
- 1994: Became chair of Computer Science Department at Rice
- 2000: Awarded the Godel Prize; named ACM Fellow
- 2005: Awarded the Paris Kanellakis Award
- 2011: Awarded the Harry H. Goode Memorial Award
- 2015: Elected to the National Academy of Sciences
- 2021: Awarded the Knuth Prize
- Present: Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor at Rice University
