[AI Story] The decisive figures of artificial intelligence (5) A fantastic combination, Simon and Newel

2024-07-04

In the fifth order of the series, we look at Herbert Simon and Alan Newel, who pioneered early artificial intelligence together. If you haven't checked out the past content of the series yet, I recommend reading it first.

‍[AI Story] Key Figures of Artificial Intelligence (1) Alan Turing

[AI Story] The decisive figures of artificial intelligence (2) Walter Fitz, the founder of deep learning

[AI Story] The decisive figures of artificial intelligence (3) John McCarthy, the founder of artificial intelligence

[AI Story] Key Figures of Artificial Intelligence (4) Rosenblatt, pioneer of deep learning

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Herbert Alexander Simon (1916.6.15.~2001.2.9.) and Allen Newell (1927.3.19.~1992.7.19.) are early pioneers of artificial intelligence. Through collaboration, we developed major programs for early artificial intelligence together. I will introduce the story of two people who were both priests and fateful partners who completed important achievements together.

Herbert Simon and Alan Newel, a fateful meeting between two people

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Alan Newel and Herbert Simon, sources

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Herbert Simon is an economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978. However, in addition to economics, I also studied various fields such as political science, business administration, histology, cognitive science, and computer science. He was also a Renaissance figure who was so versatile that he had a significant impact in all of these fields.

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Simon criticized mainstream economics at the time, which overlooked the limits of human cognitive ability and focused only on rationality. Instead, he proposed the concept of 'limited rationality'*, which pointed out the limitations of human intellect. This is an insight into the decision-making process that takes place in our brain and is the foundation for developing early artificial intelligence programs with later manual. It is also an innovative view that combines psychology with economics, and later evolved into behavioral economics.

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Meanwhile, Alan Newel studied mathematics at Stanford and Princeton. I was immersed in the beautiful world of mathematics created by an infinite number of systems. However, later, like Simon, his interests and goals changed, and he studied computer science and cognitive psychology.

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Newel, who was studying mathematics, realized after meeting game theory** that he liked the field where experiment and theory meet more than pure mathematics. After that, while studying logistics problems for the Air Force at the Rand Research Institute in Santa Monica, I fell in love with computer science. Then, I got a relationship with Herbert Simon, who was involved here, and I later received my doctorate under his guidance. ***

In this way, Simon and Newel met a partner who was destined to do many things together in the future.

Logic Theorist (LT) and General Problem Solver (General ProblemSolver)

Simon sees Bertrand Russell's “Principia Mathematica (Principia Mathematica)” and decides to create a program to prove the theorem presented here. Of course, Alan Newel participated in this research to create the first artificial intelligence program “Logic Theorist.” As a result, they proved the theorems (Theorems) in “Mathematical Principles” and showed that machines can make logical inferences. ****

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Report on logic theorists, sources & program flow chart, sources

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The logic theorist proposed a key concept that later had an important impact on artificial intelligence research. This has become the foundation for the development of expert systems that once became the mainstream of artificial intelligence research. We created an algorithm that allows machines to logically process information by providing rules commonly expressed in the form of “IF-THEN-ELSE.” ******

The two then created a program called “General Problem Solver.” It was a general-purpose program that tried to solve all problems by imitating human problem solving methods. Although it was evaluated as the first program with a human-like approach, it had the limitation of not being able to solve all the complex problems of reality. I couldn't program all the number of cases and common sense from human experience that I couldn't enter them all. *******

While finishing

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Herbert Simon and Alan Newel, sources

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In addition to this, both of them have made important achievements through lifelong research. However, the difference is that Simon incorporated scientific knowledge into Moon and Bass, while Newel incorporated literary knowledge into natural science. Even in that respect, the two were a fantastic combination that played an important role in the early development of artificial intelligence.

Also, both of them studied how thoughts occur in our brains. In other words, I wanted to create an artificial intelligence that implemented it based on understanding the human mind. In fact, Alan Newel described his career as an effort to understand the human mind. ********

In 1975, they won the Turing Award in recognition of their contributions in building the foundation of artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology. It was a natural reward for the achievements of almost a lifetime of joint research between the two scholars. The great legacy these two left to future students had a huge impact on the development of artificial intelligence in the future.

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