Arvind Krishna, CEO, chairman and president of IBM, used his acceptance speech at the TIME100 AI Impact Awards on Monday to acknowledge pioneering computer scientist and mathematician Claude Shannon, calling him one of the “unsung heroes of today.”
Krishna, who accepted his award at a ceremony in Dubai alongside musician Grimes, California Institute of Technology professor Anima Anandkumar, and artist Refik Anadol, said of Shannon, “He would come up with the ways that you can convey information, all of which has stood the test until today.”
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In 1948, Shannon—now known as the father of the information age—published “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” a transformative paper that, by proposing a simplified way of quantifying information via bits, would go on to fundamentally shape the development of information technology—and thus, our modern era. In his speech, Krishna also pointed to Shannon’s work building robotic mice that solved mazes as an example of his enjoyment of play within his research.
Krishna, of course, has some familiarity with what it takes to be at the cutting edge. Under his leadership, IBM, known as a pioneer in artificial intelligence itself, is carving its own niche in specialized AI and invests heavily in quantum computing research—the mission to build a machine based on quantum principles, which could carry out calculations much faster than existing computers. The business also runs a cloud computing service, designs software, and operates a consulting business.
Krishna said that he most enjoyed Shannon’s work because the researcher’s “simple insights” have helped contribute to the “most sophisticated communication systems” of today, including satellites. Speaking about Shannon’s theoretical work, which Krishna said was a precursor to neural networks, he noted, “I think we can give him credit for building the first elements of artificial intelligence.”
The TIME100 AI Impact Awards Dubai was presented by the World Government Summit and the Museum of the Future.
