Arthur Samuel (computer scientist)

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For the British politician, see Arthur Samuel, 1st Baron Mancroft.
Arthur Lee Samuel
Born(1901-12-05)December 5, 1901
University of Illinois (1946)
IBM Poughkeepsie Laboratory (1949)
Stanford University
(1966)

Arthur Lee Samuel (December 5, 1901 – July 29, 1990)[3] was an American pioneer in the field of computer gaming and artificial intelligence.[2] He popularized the term "machine learning" in 1959.[4] The Samuel Checkers-playing Program was among the world's first successful self-learning programs, and as such a very early demonstration of the fundamental concept of artificial intelligence (AI).[5] He was also a senior member in the TeX community who devoted much time giving personal attention to the needs of users and wrote an early TeX manual in 1983.[6]

Biography

Samuel was born on December 5, 1901, in

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign to become a Professor of Electrical Engineering, where he initiated the ILLIAC project, but left before its first computer was complete.[8]

Samuel went to

checkers program on IBM's first commercial computer, the IBM 701. The program was a sensational demonstration of the advances in both hardware and skilled programming and caused IBM's stock to increase 15 points overnight. His pioneering non-numerical programming helped shape the instruction set of processors, as he was one of the first to work with computers on projects other than computation.[2] He was known for writing articles that made complex subjects easy to understand. He was chosen to write an introduction to one of the earliest journals devoted to computing in 1953.[9]

In 1966, Samuel retired from IBM and became a professor at Stanford University, where he worked the remainder of his life. He worked with Donald Knuth on the TeX project, including writing some of the documentation. He continued to write software past his 88th birthday.[6]

He was given the Computer Pioneer Award by the IEEE Computer Society in 1987.[10] Samuel died of complications from Parkinson's disease on July 29, 1990.[5]

Computer checkers (draughts) development

Samuel is most known within the AI community for his groundbreaking work in

alpha-beta pruning.[12] Instead of searching each path until reaching the game's conclusion, Samuel developed a scoring function based on the position of the board at any given time. This function tried to measure the chance of winning for each side at the given position, taking into account elements such as the number of pieces on each side, the number of kings, and the proximity of pieces to being “kinged”. The program chose its move based on a minimax strategy, meaning it made the move that optimized the value of this function, assuming that the opponent was trying to optimize the value of the same function from its point of view.[13]

Samuel also designed various mechanisms by which his program could become better. In what he called rote learning, the program remembered every position it had already seen, along with the terminal value of the reward function. This technique effectively extended the search depth at each of these positions. Samuel's later programs reevaluated the reward function based on input from professional games. He also had it play thousands of games against itself as another way of learning. With all of this work, Samuel's program reached a respectable amateur status and was the first to play any board game at this high a level. He continued to work on checkers until the mid-1970s, at which point his program achieved sufficient skill to challenge a respectable amateur.[14]

Awards

For Adaptive non-numeric processing.

Selected works

  • Computing bit by bit, or Digital computers made easy (1953). Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 41, 1223-1230.[9]
  • Samuel, A. L. (2000). "Some studies in machine learning using the game of checkers".
    doi:10.1147/rd.441.0206
    .
Pioneer of machine learning.
Reprinted with an additional annotated game in Computers and Thought, edited by Edward Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 71-105.
  • 1983. First Grade TeX: A Beginner's TeX Manual. Stanford Computer Science Report STAN-CS-83-985 (November 1983).
Senior member in TeX community.

References

  1. ^ a b "1987 Computer Pioneer Award". computer.org. Computer Society. 6 April 2018. For Adaptive non-numeric processing
  2. ^ a b c John McCarthy; Edward Feigenbaum (1990). "In Memoriam Arthur Samuel: Pioneer in Machine Learning". AI Magazine. 11 (3). AAAI. Retrieved 11 January 2015.
  3. ^
    doi:10.1109/85.150082
    .
  4. doi:10.1147/rd.441.0206. [failed verification
    ]
  5. ^ a b c Gio Wiederhold; John McCarthy; Ed Feigenbaum (1990). "Memorial Resolution: Arthur L. Samuel" (PDF). Stanford University Historical Society. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 May 2011. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  6. ^ a b c Donald Knuth (1990). "Arthur Lee Samuel, 1901-1990" (PDF). TUGboat. pp. 497–498. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  7. doi:10.1002/j.1538-7305.1946.tb00896.x
    .
  8. ^ "Arthur Samuel". infolab.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2024-06-12.
  9. ^
    S2CID 51652282
    .
  10. ^ "Past recipients for Computer Pioneer Award". IEEE Computer Society. Archived from the original on March 22, 2011. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  11. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2017-10-19.
  12. ^ Richard Sutton (May 30, 1990). "Samuel's Checkers Player". Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction. MIT Press. Retrieved April 29, 2011.
  13. S2CID 2126705
    .
  14. ISBN 978-0-387-76575-4
    . Chapter 6.
  15. ^ "Elected AAAI Fellows". AAAI. Retrieved 2023-12-31.
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