Benjamin Grosof’s Biography
Short Biography:
Benjamin Grosof, PhD, is Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Coherent Knowledge, an AI startup that provides highly explainable decision support via query answering. He is an industry leader in the theory and practice of how to represent, reason with, and acquire, knowledge – including how to combine logical knowledge representation & reasoning (KRR) with machine learning (ML) and natural language (NL). He has pioneered technology and industry standards for expressively flexible semantic rules combined with ontologies and knowledge graphs, their acquisition from natural language, and a wide variety of applications including in finance, legal & policy, e-commerce, health care & life science, defense & security, and helpdesk. In particular, he has led invention of declarative logic programs that extend databases scalably with powerful implications and meta-logic features such as probabilities, higher-order syntax, bounded rationality (restraint), and exceptions/argumentation (defeasibility). Previously, he was a technical/research executive in AI at: the Allen Institute for AI’s predecessor; Accenture; and Kyndi, a venture-backed AI startup. Earlier, he was a MIT Sloan professor in IT, and an IBM Research scientist. His background includes a part-time expert consulting practice, Stanford PhD in computer science (specialty AI), Harvard BA in applied mathematics, 60+ refereed publications, 10,000+ citations, 5 patents, 2 W3C standards, and 5 major industry software products.
More Bio Details:
(Continuing and elaborating from the Short Biography above; with some repetitions while iteratively deepening the degree of detail:)
He has pioneered logic-based (a.k.a. semantic) technology and industry standards for rules combined with ontologies, their acquisition from natural language, and their applications in finance, e-commerce, policies (including contracts, regulations, and security), and e-learning. He co-founded the influential standards design body RuleML and has had driving roles in W3C RIF (Rule Interchange Format) and W3C OWL-RL (rule-based ontologies). He led the invention of several fundamental technical advances in knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) including Rulelog (a breakthrough in logic-based AI combined with natural language processing (NLP)), courteous defeasibility (exception-case rules), restraint bounded rationality (scalability in complex reasoning), and rule-based description-logic ontologies. He has extensive experience in user interaction design, and in combining logical methods with machine learning and probabilistic uncertainty.
Dr. Grosof has experience applying core technology for knowledge, reasoning, and related human-computer interaction (HCI) in a wide variety of applications for data/decision analytics, including: financial services, accounting, and risk management; compliance with policies, legal regulations, and contracts; e-commerce, digital marketing, and customer care; privacy/security and trust management; defense and national intelligence; health care and life science; education and publishing. He is chief scientist of AI at Kyndi, an AI startup that combines machine learning (ML) with NLP and KRR, based on unique technology for advanced knowledge graphs, for a range of applications in complex, largely-unstructured information. He is co-founder, board member, and former CTO & CEO (2013-2017) of Coherent Knowledge, an AI startup that has commercialized Rulelog. Previously, he was a technical executive for launch of an ambitious initiative to leverage AI for business process automation across Accenture’s $8B+ Operations group (2017-2018). He led a large research program in advanced AI (artificial intelligence) and rule-based semantic technologies for Paul G. Allen (2007-2013) at Vulcan Inc.’s Project Halo, the predecessor of the Allen Institute for AI. He was an IT professor and DARPA PI at MIT Sloan (2000-2007), a senior software scientist at IBM Research (1988-2000), and principal of his own part-time expert consulting firm (2000-2017).
Two W3C industry standards are based largely on his work: Rule Interchange Format (RIF, 2010) and Web Ontology Language’s rule-based subset (OWL 2 RL Profile, 2009). His notable technical contributions also include fundamental advances in integration of rules with machine learning. He co-founded the International Conference on Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web (which since became the RR and RuleML conferences). He has interacted extensively with a large variety of companies, at CXO level as well as technically, in the course of his research, entrepreneurship, standards, and consulting activities.
At Vulcan, he conceived and led a large advanced research program in the area of rule-based semantic technologies and AI, within Vulcan’s overall Project Halo, the predecessor of the Allen Institute for AI. This included:
- creation of the game-changing SILK knowledge representation (KR) core technology, which enables powerfully expressive yet scalable semantic web rules that are defeasible, higher-order/meta-, omni-directional, and reactive;
- applying its KR techniques immediately to scientific question-answering, search, and semantic wiki knowledge networking; and
- exploring its longer-term implications in business and government.
More details on Vulcan era work.
At MIT and IBM, his research involved the creation of applied, as well as core, semantic technologies for web-based e-services and business communication. This included pioneering work in three areas:
- e-commerce, including business policies for e-contracts, shopping, and advertising, as well as early commercial intelligent agents;
- information integration in financial services and reporting; and
- policy-based security/privacy trust authorization.
It also included a variety of other application domains, particularly: e-services engineering, including lifecycle reuse of knowledge and business process management; business and defense intelligence; health care patient records; personalization, including in communications and news; operations management for customer service; and travel. He was prime designer and project leader for the SweetRules open source platform for semantic rules and ontologies on the web (2004), while principal investigator and rules co-lead in the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) program. He was a lead author of the Semantic Web Services Framework (2005). He conceived and led IBM CommonRules (1999) and co-led its application piloting for rule-based XML agent contracting in EECOMS, a $29 Million NIST industry-government consortium project on manufacturing supply chain collaboration.
Before IBM, he had experience at two software startups in Cambridge, MA. He also interned as a financial analyst in a Wall Street bank stock specialist firm.
For yet more bio, especially details about his IBM projects 1988-2000, for now see his old IBM biography.
Personal:
(This part is in first person, not third person…) I grew up in Manhattan. Even after all these years living in other places/sub-cultures, I tend to talk too fast, get too excited and emphatic intellectually, and sometimes interrupt when I shouldn’t (apologies in advance; “interruption is a form of love” in the sub-culture I was raised in).
My wife Janine Bloomfield directs Coherent Knowledge’s operations and marketing. She draws upon a strong science and policy background. She obtained her PhD in Forestry and Environmental Science at Yale University. Previously, among other positions, she was Senior Scientist on global climate change at Environmental Defense Fund, a leading non-governmental organization.
Janine and I have three wondrous and inspiring children: Isaac Bloomfield Grosof (b. 1995), Eliana Bloomfield Grosof (b. 1997), and Jacob Bloomfield Grosof (b. 2003).
My other interests and experiences include:
- meditation; dancing, electric blues; radio-DJ’ing.
- hard science fiction; visual art, incl. making computer art; movies.
- hiking; frisbee; baseball/softball, running.