Speakers
Jeff Orkin, Ph.D., CEO, Bitpart AI
Dr. Jeff Orkin is an AI researcher, serial entrepreneur, and game industry veteran. Jeff is currently Cofounder / CEO of Bitpart AI, a startup developing advanced NPC technology that combines Machine Learning with Automated Planners. Previously Jeff founded Giant Otter Technologies, a conversational AI venture that grew out of his Ph.D research at the MIT Media Lab. Giant Otter was acquired by Drift conversational marketing, where Jeff led the AI team for 4 years building products that learned from billions of chat messages. Jeff began his career as an AI specialist in the game industry for 10 years, at Sierra and Monolith Productions. His work on No One Lives Forever 2 (NOLF2) and F.E.A.R. won awards for the best AI in the industry. F.E.A.R. was the first commercial video game to ship with a goal-oriented action planner (GOAP), inspired by STRIPS planning from robotics research. Jeff has served as a co-Author of the AI Game Programming Wisdom book series, Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, and has presented at GDC, AIIDE, IEEE CIG, MIGS, AAAI, AAMAS, ICAPS, and SARA. Prior to MIT, Jeff earned a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington and Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Tufts University with a minor in Studio Art.