Cornell Expert Quotes | Cornell Chronicle

Cornell Expert Quotes

Cornellians weigh in on current events in the news

"As Trump showed, even negative buzz is good, especially for front runners, because it can suck attention away from challengers (remember during GOP debate when he talked about his ‘hands’)."

Drew Margolin

Assistant Professor

Topic	Name	Date
Computing & Information Sciences , Cornell SC Johnson College of Business	Joseph Halpern Professor of Computer Science and Joseph C. Ford Professor of Engineering	02/19/20
	“Currently, there are few downsides to a company if software they put out suffers from flaws. If software I use gets hacked because poor security procedures are in place, the company that designed the software is typically not punished. When it comes to highly critical applications, it becomes all the more important both to test and certify products, and to hold the companies that design the product to a high standard.” Media: Jeff Tyson jeff.tyson@cornell.edu (607) 793-5769 Related Tip Sheet: EU lapses in effort to compete with big tech, takes the lead in AI ethics (02/19/20)
Computing & Information Sciences , Cornell SC Johnson College of Business	Thomas Jungbauer Assistant professor of strategy and business economics	02/19/20
	“In today’s age it is questionable whether the nationality of business giants in the Western world plays a crucial role. Does Google serve the U.S. public, Samsung the Korean one? In my opinion, it is more important to create and foster a society in Europe that makes these tech giants strongly desire to have a strong foothold in Europe, while the location of their headquarters is of secondary importance.” Media: Jeff Tyson jeff.tyson@cornell.edu (607) 793-5769 Related Tip Sheet: EU lapses in effort to compete with big tech, takes the lead in AI ethics (02/19/20)
Computing & Information Sciences	Ken Birman Professor of Computer Science	02/04/20
	“The bottom line is that today’s mobile apps are seductively easy to build. Many are released without proper testing, and there is often minimal support if problems occur when installing them or setting up accounts. Voting is far too important to trust to such a haphazard process." Media: Jeff Tyson jeff.tyson@cornell.edu (607) 793-5769 Related Tip Sheet: Iowa delay underscores need for voting tech oversight (02/04/20)
Computing & Information Sciences	Peter McMahon Assistant Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics	10/23/19
	“Google’s results from their Sycamore processor represents a remarkable milestone in the field of quantum computing: for the first time, a fully programmable quantum computer has been built at a scale and quality that it can perform some computations much faster than a classical supercomputer." Media: Gillian Smith gillian.smith@cornell.edu 607-254-6235 Related Tip Sheet: Google quantum computing breakthrough a ‘remarkable milestone’ (10/23/19)
Computing & Information Sciences , Engineering	Bart Selman Professor of Computer Science	04/22/19
	“Self-driving car technology has made incredible advances over the last five years. Vastly improved vision technology combined with inputs from other sensors are getting us close to full autonomy. However, we don't yet know whether we can reach the level of safety of a human driver within the next three to five years." Media: Jeff Tyson jeff.tyson@cornell.edu (607) 793-5769 Related Tip Sheet: Tesla’s reliance on ‘computer vision’ adds to self-driving car challenge (04/22/19)
Business, Economics & Entrepreneurship , Law and Policy , Computing & Information Sciences	Stephen Wicker Professor of electrical and computer engineering	03/11/19
	Wicker says: “The Save the Internet Act is a vitally important move toward recovering the original promise of the ‘information superhighway.’ It shows that Congress is responding to the concerns of its constituents. “FCC chairman Ajit Pai has been an outspoken critic of net neutrality, claiming that net neutrality stifles innovation. By innovation, he appears to means the creation of new markets for media giants through predatory pricing schemes. He fails to consider the loss of innovation that will occur through the potential strangulation of small startups. His inability to take the matter seriously is reflected in his recent choice to film an anti-neutrality diatribe while wearing a Santa Claus outfit. “Net neutrality is neither a joke nor a game. The threat of internet censorship is very real. In a 2012 brief to the FCC, a major internet service provider likened itself to a newspaper editor, an editor that may exercise ‘editorial discretion in selecting which speech to transmit and how to do it.’ “In an era of ever-increasing media consolidation, net neutrality has never been more important. It is a matter of free speech – the speech of small new companies that want to enjoy the same level playing field as that originally given to Google and Facebook.” Media: Rachel Rhodes rer252@cornell.edu 202-434-8036 Related Tip Sheet: Net neutrality law to end the strangulation of startups, innovation (03/11/19)
Computing & Information Sciences , Agriculture and Life Sciences	Drew Margolin Assistant Professor	12/06/18
	“After Congress struggled to understand how Facebook operated, and thus what its responsibilities ought to be, we should expect even more confusion in testimony from Google. Social networks sites are a recent invention, but the basic concept of what they do is intuitive to human beings, whereas search engines are much more complex, which makes their public responsibility much harder to gauge." Media: Jeff Tyson jeff.tyson@cornell.edu (607) 793-5769 Related Tip Sheet: Right-left political bias in the spotlight with Google testimony (12/06/18)
Computing & Information Sciences , Physical Sciences & Engineering , Computing & Information Sciences , Engineering	Bart Selman Professor of Computer Science	05/10/18
	"The U.S. has always been a leader in AI research and development but other countries are now catching up fast with heavy investments from governments and industry." Media: Jeff Tyson jeff.tyson@cornell.edu (607) 793-5769 Related Tip Sheet: White House AI summit signals U.S. leadership in competitive industry (05/10/18)
Computing & Information Sciences , Physical Sciences & Engineering , Engineering	Bart Selman Professor of Computer Science	03/19/18
	"An accident like this calls for a re-evaluation of how to introduce and further develop the self-driving technology so that people will come to recognize and accept it as feasible and very safe." Media: Jeff Tyson jeff.tyson@cornell.edu (607) 793-5769 Related Tip Sheet: Pedestrian death from self-driving car highlights need for additional tech (03/19/18)
Arts and Sciences , Computing & Information Sciences	Ravi Ramakrishna Professor of mathematics	03/07/18
	"The number pi (3.14159265...) has intrigued scientists and mathematicians for thousands of years. It is defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter (the same amount, no matter how big or small the circle!) but has eluded easy computation." Media: Jeff Tyson jeff.tyson@cornell.edu (607) 793-5769 Related Tip Sheet: Pi Day: 10 trillion digits and counting (03/07/18)

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