Key Researchers

While many researchers have evolved AI into the field that it is today, this section will attempt to discuss a small cross-section of those pioneers and their contributions.

Alan Turing

The British mathematician Alan Turing first introduced the idea that all human-solvable problems can be reduced to a set of algorithms. This opened the door to the idea that thought itself might be algorithmically reducible, and therefore machines could be programmed to mimic humans in thought and perhaps consciousness. In coming to this conclusion, Alan Turing created the Turing Machine, which could mimic the operation of any other computing machine. Later, Alan Turing proposed the Turing Test to provide the means to recognize machine intelligence.

John McCarthy

John McCarthy is not only one of the earliest AI researchers, but he continues his research today as a Hoover Institution Senior Fellow at Stanford University. He co-founded the MIT AI Laboratory, founded the Stanford AI Lab, and organized the first conference on AI in 1956 (Dartmouth Conference). His research has brought us the LISP language, considered the primary choice of symbolic AI software development today. Time-sharing computer systems, including the ability to mathematically prove the correctness of computer programs, were an early invention of John McCarthy.

Marvin Minsky

Marvin Minsky has been one of the most prolific researchers in the field of AI as well as many others. He is currently the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT where, with John McCarthy, he founded MIT's AI Lab in 1958. Marvin Minsky has written seminal papers in a variety of fields including neural networks, knowledge representation, and cognitive psychology. He created the AI concept of frames that modeled phenomena in cognition, language understanding, and visual perception. Professor Minsky also built the first hardware neural network-learning machine and built the first LOGO turtle .

Arthur Samuel

Arthur Samuel (19011990) was an early pioneer in machine learning and artificial intelligence. He had a long and illustrious career as an educator and an engineer, and was known as being helpful and modest of his achievements. Samuel is most well known for his checkers-playing program, developed in 1957. This was one of the first examples of an intelligent program playing a complex game. Not only did the program result in beating Samuel, it defeated the fourth-rated checkers player in the nation. Samuel's papers on machine learning are still noted as worthwhile reading.