Luc Steels studied linguistics at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA). His main research field is Artificial Intelligence covering a wide range of intelligent abilities, including vision, robotic behavior, conceptual representations and language. In 1983 he became a professor of computer science at the University of Brussels (VUB) and in 1996 he founded the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris and became its first director. Currently he is ICREA Research Professor at the Institute for Evolutionary Biology (CSIC,UPF). Steels has been PI in a dozen large-scale European projects and  almost 40 PhD theses have been granted under his direction. He has produced over 300 articles and edited 15 books directly related to his research.

Research interests

The past decade I have focused on the origins and evolution of languages and developed various computational models identifying the minimal cognitive structures and social interaction patterns needed. In view of recent important developments in AI, I have started to focus more and more on unsolved fundamental puzzles in AI related to meaning, particularly in relation to the current trend towards human-centric AI. I proposed a new architecture for AI in which narratives and personal dynamic memory plays an essential role and am currently working on technical implementations of this idea and experiments both in the domain of art and creativity and in tracking and facilitating opinion dynamics as played out on social media. I have also become keenly interested in the early history of AI and hope to finish a major publication on this topic in the course of the present year.