The content highlights the profound legacy of mathematician David Blackwell, a pioneer in probability theory and statistics whose foundational work underpins modern artificial intelligence, and whose story is now being brought to light through a documentary and recognition by Nvidia.
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This is a very important segment.
>> Hey. [applause] >> Hey.
>> Hey.
>> How are you?
>> How are you?
>> How are you?
>> We are good. How you feeling?
>> I'm feeling great. It's I'm just a
pleasure to be here and so much fun to
listen to you guys. This is great. It's
it not only is it good stuff, it's
interesting and fun. I love the way you
present it and I'm like, "Yes, okay. I'm
right. I'm taking notes right here."
>> Thank you. Thank you. So, this is
vitally important. So,
>> okay, Lisa Blackwell. So, all right,
some backstory. If you follow Nvidia,
you know that they every year they come
out with a new chip
>> and they name the chip after a
historical figure like one of the top
scientists in the world, somebody that
has contributed to artificial
intelligence, somebody that you know
like a a pioneer in this space.
Last year, Chip was named Blackwell. So,
Blackwell before Reuben is this year.
Reuben hasn't come out yet. So,
currently Blackwell is the most advanced
chip ever created. Um,
>> now the interesting thing is that
Blackwell was named after David Blackwell.
Blackwell.
>> David Blackwell is Lisa's grandfather.
>> Correct. This this is a very interesting
story and we're gonna play a visual.
We're gonna play a visual to talk about
it and then we But before we play the
visual, can you just ceue up Can you
queue this up for us?
>> Sure. So, you're about to see 10 minutes
of what is a concept reel for the
documentary that we're creating about my
grandfather's story. And
it it really has a little bit of the
sort of lynch pin that everything turned
around on like when I start digging into
the story and what I discovered. And you
guys are getting ready to see sort of um
what that looks like. And again, this is
the concept reel for the documentary.
>> Let's play it, shall we?
>> Let's do it. >> Okay.
>> Okay.
>> National Medal of Science to David
Blackwell, University of California,
Berkeley. I would like to introduce you
to a very very big GPU named after David Blackwell
>> for fundamental contributions to
probability theory, mathematical
statistics, information theory,
mathematical logic and Blackwell games.
>> David Blackwell was a a great amongst
greats. He was the great great great
[music] mathematician among great mathematicians.
mathematicians.
>> Blackwell was a pioneer who was ahead of
>> [music]
>> I thought I knew my grandfather. Eggs at
dawn, martinis at dusk, and a 5% [music]
dividend man all the way.
Years later, Nvidia named their platform
Blackwell. That's [music] when I started
digging and discovered my grandfather,
Professor Blackwell, architect [music]
of the mathematics behind artificial intelligence.
A lot of his ideas really caused people
to rethink how do we interpret data?
There are many many standard tools that
people use all the time that are named
after David. You know, Blackwell spaces
and the row Blackwell theorem.
>> Blackwell nowadays is known for what's
called the Blackwell row theorem.
Sort of like saying if something happens
frequently enough,
you should be able to kind of predict
what's going to happen next. However,
there might be some bias in some of that data.
data.
That's essentially what the Blackwell
Ralph theorem tells you is that there's
a way you can kind of estimate what
should happen but then minimize the bias
that you would have there in the data.
And this is an amazing approach to doing statistics.
statistics.
If Blackwell were alive today, he would
certainly be the one to raise up his
hand and say, you know, look, there's
bias in AI. There's bias in the training
data that we're using, and we really
need to think about minimizing these as
I was very clear that I was going to be
a school teacher. My father had a friend
who was on the school board and before I
finished high school, he already told my
father that if I went to college and got
a degree, he would get me a job
teaching. And this was in the
depression. And it was a great relief to
me and everybody else when it was clear
what my future was going to be. After I
got my bachelor's degree in three years,
I decided to spend my fourth year
getting a master's degree. But then at
the end of my fourth year, I was
encouraged to apply for a fellowship to
go on for a PhD and I did. And then of
course my objective changed. There were
perhaps 25 awards. 22 of them required
teaching assistant responsibilities.
And everybody applied for both things.
And the lucky three got the fellowships.
And one of my colleagues who also
applied told me
that I was going to get one of the fellowships.
fellowships.
And I said, "How do you know?" And he
said, "Well, they're good enough to be
supported and they're not going to put
And he was right.
>> They were not going to put you in front
of a classroom because
David, you know,
he he was he was a black mathematician
and there are no black mathematicians
that would that it work but but there
very few anyway. What was it like to be
David Blackwell? I never could get him
to talk about that. Anything about what
his experiences were in Berkeley? He had
the problems of not being hired in the 1950s
1950s
because the wife of the chairman of the
Berkeley math department said, "Well, I
wouldn't want to see us hire somebody
that I couldn't invite to my home." Yet
Jersey Neon realized that David
Blackwell was David Blackwell and did
hire him over these awful people's dead
bodies. [music] But to try to get David
to tell any story of that sort, he just
My grandfather came to UC Berkeley in 1954.
1954.
That was the same year that the Brown
versus the Board of Education came down, 1954.
1954.
And my grandparents are driving across
the country with their seven kids
[music] with the green book. There was
this book that they had to use to get
across the country so they knew where
they could sleep, safe places that they
could sleep.
Then when he got here, he wasn't offered
the customary hospitality
and so [music] he went and they didn't
have housing. They slept in Tilden Park
for 2 months while and he would go
commute and teach at the school. Seven children
when we traveled and we did travel a lot
in the car in the the station wagon.
When we would travel, he would have a
map and he would give each of us a map
and he would have gasoline estimates,
time estimates for how long it was going
to take us, estimates for how long we go
to the bathroom, estimates for what the
traffic was going to be. But along the
way, he kept us all engaged at our own
level. And it was remarkable [music] to
have children 10 years apart. One is
very young, the other one is much more
mature and still keep them all engaged.
They somehow felt equal to the
challenge. It was just reflective of his
considerate manner of teaching. [music]
>> Your grandfather was the most
delightful, friendly, warmest person. I
just remember him with a smile on his face.
All the years I had heard people talk
about David Blackwell. [music] They
never talked about him being angry or
bitter. Most importantly, they never
[music] talked about him saying anything
negative about anyone else. And that
[music] I think truly is a testament to
his character. That's what I strive to
do is to really say maybe things have
happened negatively [music] but let me
not try to dwell on that and let me try
to move forward to say what are positive
things [music] that are happening and
what are ways that I can make this world
You have arrived
at a developers conference.
There will be a lot of science described,
described,
algorithms, computer architecture, mathematics.
In March last year, Nvidia unveiled its
most ambitious GPU architecture.
We named [music] it Blackwell in honor
of Dr. Blackwell.
Today, we're witnessing the dawn of the
AI era, and the Blackwell architecture
is the engine [music] that's powering
this new industrial revolution.
We strive each day to honor Dr.
Blackwell's remarkable legacy by
bringing the promise [music] of AI to
industries, developers, and researchers worldwide.
