AI Visionary Nils Nilsson Has Died

In his twenty-three years with Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Center Nilsson worked on statistical and neural-network approaches to pattern recognition, co-invented the A* heuristic search algorithm and the STRIPS automatic planning system, and co-directed work on the integrated mobile robot, SHAKEY. From 1985 to 1990, Professor Nilsson was Chairman of the Department of Computer Science at Stanford, where he taught artificial intelligence and machine learning while researching how robots can react to the dynamic world, plan actions accordingly, and learn from experience. In The Quest for Artificial Intelligence: A History of Ideas and Achievements, Professor Nilsson wrote, “Artificial intelligence (AI) may lack an agreed-upon definition… For me, artificial intelligence is that activity devoted to making machines intelligent, and intelligence is that quality that enables an entity to function appropriately and with foresight in its environment.”

Source: syncedreview.com