Doug Cutting is currently Chief Architect at Cloudera, Inc. and the founder of numerous groundbreaking open-source projects, including Lucene, Nutch, Avro, and Hadoop.

 

The wide-spread adoption of Hadoop, in particular, is credited for giving rise to today’s big data industry.

 

Mr. Cutting was previously Chair of the Apache Software Foundation Board. He has also worked with Yahoo, Excite, Apple, and Xerox PARC.

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What is your full name?
Douglass Read Cutting 

What is your occupation?
Software Engineer 
 

Tell us about your first encounter with artificial intelligence (AI)?
John McCarthy's LISP course in 1984. 
 

What is your competence within the field of AI?
I am not an AI expert. 
 

Why did you develop an interest in AI?
I enjoyed creating software and felt this was an area with potential for growth. 
 

Can you recommend a relevant book or film about AI?
The Machine Stops, a short story by E.M.Forster 
 

Why should we, or should we not, be afraid of AI?
We should not fear AI.  We should however fear people who give too much power to software. 
 

Which field, in your opinion, has the most to benefit from AI – and why?
I'm hopeful we can use AI to better diagnose and treat illnesses. 
 

How should the use of AI develop in the future?
Alongside a habit of analyzing the ethical aspects of every system we build. 
 

Why should participants tune in on your presentation during AI+?
To get some ideas about building systems that better respect people.

 

Doug Cutting is a speaker at the AI+ virtual conference 2020.