UMBC professor Houbing Song and PhD student Safayat Bin Hakim will give a free online webinar on Neuro-symbolic AI: The Third Wave of AI, at 8:00am EDT on Thursday, 26 September 2025. The webinar is part of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES) Young Professionals Society "Inspire the Next Generation with IEEE IES SYP Forum and Webinar Series".

There are three waves of Artificial Intelligence. The first Wave of AI is Crafted Knowledge, which includes rule-based AI systems. The second wave of AI is Statistical Learning, which includes machines becoming intelligent by using statistical methods. The third wave of AI is contextual adaptation. In the third wave, instead of learning from data, intelligent machines will understand and perceive the world on its own, and learn by understanding the world and reason with it. Neuro-symbolic AI, which combines neural networks with symbolic representations, has emerged as a promising solution of the third wave of AI. In this talk, first Houbing Herbert Song will share his journey from counter-unmanned aircraft systems to explainable AI to neuro-symbolic AI. Then he will present the past, present, and future of neuro-symbolic AI. Prof. Song will also share his perspective on the emerging area of neuro-symbolic AI.

Register for the free webinar here. A recording will be available online sometime after the presentation.