Allen Newell

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Not to be confused with Alan Newell.
Allen Newell
Frank Ritter
Milind Tambe

Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 – July 19, 1992) was an American researcher in

A.M. Turing Award along with Herbert A. Simon in 1975 for their contributions to artificial intelligence and the psychology of human cognition.[1][2]

Early studies

Newell completed his bachelor's degree in physics from

Stanford in 1949. He was a graduate student at Princeton University from 1949 to 1950, where he studied mathematics. Due to his early exposure to an unknown field known as game theory
and the experiences from the study of mathematics, he was convinced that he would prefer a combination of experimental and theoretical research to pure mathematics.

In 1950, he left Princeton and joined the

RAND Corporation in Santa Monica where he worked for "a group that was studying logistics problems of the Air Force" (Simon). His work with Joseph Kruskal led to the creation of two theories: A Model for Organization Theory and Formulating Precise Concepts in Organization Theory. Newell eventually earned his PhD from the now Tepper School of Business
at Carnegie Mellon with Herbert Simon serving as his advisor.

Afterwards, Newell "turned to the design and conduct of laboratory experiments on decision making in small groups" (Simon). He was dissatisfied, however, with the accuracy and validity of their findings produced from small-scale laboratory experiments. He joined with fellow RAND teammates John Kennedy, Bob Chapman, and Bill Biel at an Air Force Early Warning Station to study organizational processes in flight crews. They received funding from the Air Force in 1952 to build a simulator that would enable them to examine and analyze the interactions in the cockpit related to decision-making and information-handling. From these studies, Newell came to believe that information processing is the central activity in organizations.

Artificial intelligence

In September 1954, Newell enrolled in a seminar where Oliver Selfridge "described a running computer program that learned to recognize letters and other patterns" (Simon). This was when Allen came to believe that systems may be created and contain intelligence and have the ability to adapt. With this in mind, Allen, after a couple of months, wrote in 1955 The Chess Machine: An Example of Dealing with a Complex Task by Adaptation, which "outlined an imaginative design for a computer program to play chess in humanoid fashion" (Simon).

His work came to the attention of economist (and future nobel laureate)

heuristics
to limit the search space.

They presented the program at the Dartmouth conference of 1956, an informal gathering of researchers who were interested in simulating intelligence with machines. The conference, now widely considered the "birth of artificial intelligence",[4] was enormously influential and those who attended became the leaders of AI research for the next two decades, Newell included.

Later achievements

Newell and Simon formed a lasting partnership. They founded an artificial intelligence laboratory at

physical symbol systems hypothesis
, the controversial philosophical assertion that all intelligent behavior could be reduced to the kind of symbol manipulation that Newell's programs demonstrated.

Newell's work culminated in the development of a

unified theory of cognition, published in 1990, but their improvement was the objective of his efforts up to his death (one of the last Newell's letters Archived 2011-05-14 at the Wayback Machine). The field of cognitive architectures, that he initiated, is still active in both the artificial intelligence and computational cognitive science communities.[5]

Awards and honors

The

Award for Research Excellence of the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science
was also named in his honor.

See also

Notes

[i]Logic theorist is usually considered the first true AI program, although Arthur Samuel's checkers program was released earlier. Christopher Strachey also wrote a checkers program in 1951[17]

References

  1. ^ "Allen Newell, 65; Scientist Founded A Computing Field". The New York Times. July 20, 1992. Retrieved November 28, 2010.
  2. United States National Academy of Sciences
    . Retrieved November 28, 2010.
  3. ISBN 978-1-56881-205-2
    .
  4. ISBN 0-465-02997-3
    .
  5. S2CID 51888132
    .
  6. ^ "Search Deceased Member Data". United States National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved July 16, 2011. Search with Newell as last name.
  7. ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter N" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
  8. ^ "A. M. Turing Award". Association for Computing Machinery. Archived from the original on 2009-12-12. Retrieved February 10, 2011.
  9. ^ "Search Fellows". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Archived from the original on 2012-09-23. Retrieved July 18, 2011. Search for Newell between 1976 and 1977.
  10. United States National Academy of Engineering
    . Retrieved January 22, 2011.
  11. ^ "Computer Pioneer Charter Recipients". IEEE Computer Society. Archived from the original on 2013-07-21. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
  12. ^ "IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award Recipients" (PDF). IEEE. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-11-24. Retrieved December 30, 2010.
  13. ^ "IEEE W.R.G. Baker Prize Paper Award Recipients" (PDF). IEEE. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 25, 2011. Retrieved November 28, 2010.
  14. ^ "Elected AAAI Fellows". AAAI. Retrieved 2023-12-31.
  15. ^ "The President's National Medal of Science: Recipient Details Allen Newell". US National Science Foundation. Retrieved November 28, 2010.
  16. ^ "Franklin Laureate Database - Louis E. Levy Medal Laureates". Franklin Institute. Archived from the original on June 29, 2011. Retrieved January 22, 2011.
  17. ISBN 978-0-465-02997-6
    .
  1. ^ Logic theorist is usually considered the first true AI program, although Arthur Samuel's checkers program was released earlier. Christopher Strachey also wrote a checkers program in 1951

Further reading

External links

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