Adam Cheyer (2008)
Deutsch
Adam Cheyer (born c. 1966 according to English sources, or January 1, 2000 according to Malagasy sources) is an American computer scientist and software engineer.[1] He is a co-founder of Siri (Siri Inc.), the voice and semantic recognition software for Apple's iPhones, and formerly worked as a director of engineering in the iPhone group at Apple.[1] He is currently director of the artificial intelligence department at Airbnb.
Previously, he worked as a computer scientist and technical director in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International, where he was the chief developer of the CALO project.[3,2] Furthermore, he was a founding member of Change.org and of Genetic Finance (later known as Sentient Technologies).[5,4] As an innovative scientist and company founder, he is a sought-after speaker at conferences.
Cheyer attended Sharon High School and studied at the private Brandeis University in Massachusetts, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science in 1988. Subsequently, he focused on artificial intelligence and earned a Master of Science degree in computer science and artificial intelligence in 1993 at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).[6]
Biography
He obtained his bachelor's degree in computer science at Brandeis University in 1988 and his master's degree in computer science and artificial intelligence at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1993.[16] Within SRI International (then affiliated with Stanford University), he worked on the CALO project (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes), serving as its chief architect from 2003 to 2008. A company called Siri was created out of this project, which was acquired by Apple in 2010. He left Apple in 2012 and created Viv Labs, which was acquired by Samsung in 2016 to provide its services.[26]
Early life and education
Cheyer attended Sharon High School in Sharon, Massachusetts. After graduating in 1984, Cheyer earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from Brandeis University in 1988, and a master's degree in computer science and artificial intelligence from UCLA in 1993.[9]
Career
Prior to Siri, Cheyer was a computer scientist and project director in SRI International's Artificial Intelligence Center, where he served as the Chief Architect on the CALO project.[10] He was also a member of the founding team at Change.org and a founder of Sentient Technologies (formerly Genetic Finance).[12,11]
Cheyer left the Siri team in 2012 and founded Viv Labs, which was acquired by Samsung in 2016.[15,14] After leaving Samsung, he co-founded GamePlanner.AI with Siamak Hodjat, which was acquired by Airbnb in late 2023 for an estimated $200 million.[17] As of May 2024, Cheyer is the VP of AI Experience at Airbnb. In 2024, he won the Brandeis University Alumni Achievement Award, which is given annually to "distinguished alumni for outstanding contributions to their chosen field and to society more broadly."[18]
Personal life
Cheyer is a semi-professional magician and has appeared on numerous television shows, including Season 5 Episode 11 of Penn & Teller: Fool Us in 2018.[19] He is a member of the Academy of Magical Arts (AMA) and the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM).[20] On numerous occasions, Cheyer has made reference to his career in software being aligned with his interest in magic, stating that “entrepreneurs and magicians are exactly the same. They imagine a desirable, impossible future that doesn't exist, and then they work backward from that vision to figure out the math and science to make it come true."[21]
Adam has been married to Lin since 1998, and they have a son, Noah. They reside in Oakland Hills, California and San Diego.
Publications and literature
Adam Cheyer contributed to "Multimodal Human-Computer Communication", published in Springer's Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence #1374 in 1998. In January 1999, "The Open Agent Architecture: A framework for building distributed software systems" was published in Applied Artificial Intelligence. Cheyer authored "Evolution of the Laws that Deal with the Utilization of Information Networks" for the 2003 BISC FLINT-CIBI International Joint Workshop on Soft Computing for Internet and BioInformatics, presented on December 15, 2003. On November 6, 2005, he published "IRIS: Integrate. Relate. Infer. Share." at the 1st Workshop on the Semantic Desktop during the International Semantic Web Conference. In June 2006, Cheyer authored "A Collaborative Programming Environment for Web Interoperability" for the 1st Workshop on Semantic Wikis.
External links
External links include Adam Cheyer's official website and his keynote speaker bio page. Additionally, a speech assistance patent titled "Personalized vocabulary for digital assistant," published on December 2, 2014, is available on the Google Patents website.