[5][6] Siegel was born in 1961[7] and spent his early childhood in the Bronx, New York and focused on computer science at a young age.
[8] By 12 years old, he had built memory and logic boards and learned to program a supercomputer at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
There, he conducted research at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and developed thermal and tactile sensors for the Utah-MIT dexterous four-fingered hand, as well as a computational architecture for controlling the system.
[citation needed] In 2001, Siegel co-founded Two Sigma, a New York City-based company that applies data science and technology to financial services.
[18] Siegel has spoken about encouraging employees to branch out from their daily work at Two Sigma, taking on outside engineering challenges and coding competitions.
He has called machine learning the "story of our times," and despite its limitations, such as a lack of common sense, has described it as "the best way anyone has come up with to algorithmically find knowledge in unstructured data.
[21] He has also argued that algorithms such as those used by search and social media companies could harm society by "contributing to increasingly slanted and divided views about the issues of the day.
[25] Siegel has suggested that if society is going to trust machines with life or death situations, it must "insist on new, tougher standards for their software.
[32] In 2019, Siegel Family Endowment made commitments to CSforALL,[33] and the Constellations Center for Equity in Computing[34] and the Aspen Institute.
[35] Siegel Family Endowment makes mission-driven grants in three interest area portfolios:[36] In 2014, Siegel co-founded the Scratch Foundation to ensure that Scratch, a free online coding community that helps children learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively, remains free and accessible to kids all over the world.
[56] In 2016, Siegel received the FIRST organization's John C. Whitehead Leadership Award in honor of his service and support for the science and technology education charity's New York chapter.