In Memoriam-Arthur Samuel: Pioneer in Machine Learning

Memoriam AI Magazine Volume 11 Number 3 (1990) (© AAAI) In Memoriam

Arthur Samuel: Pioneer in Samuel was a modest man, and the strate the Machine Learning importance of his work was widely power of recognized only after his retirement electronic Arthur Samuel (1901–1990) was a from IBM in 1966, in part because he comput- pioneer of artificial intelligence didn’t relish the politics that were ers. He research. From 1949 through the late required to have his research more didn’t fin- 1960s, he did the best work in mak- vigorously followed up on. He was ish the ing computers learn from their expe- also realistic about the large difference program while he was at the universi- rience. His vehicle for this work was between what had been accomplished ty of Illinois, perhaps because the the game of checkers. in understanding intellectual mecha- computer wasn’t finished in time. Programs for playing games often nisms and what would be required to In 1949, Samuel joined IBM’s fill the role in artificial intelligence reach human-level intelligence. Poughkeepsie Laboratory, where he research that the fruit fly Drosophila Samuel’s papers on machine learn- worked on IBM’s first stored program plays in genetics. Drosophilae are ing are still worth studying. Possess- computer, the 701. This computer’s convenient for genetics because they ing great creativity and essentially memory was based on Williams tubes, breed fast and are cheap to keep, and working alone, doing his own pro- which stored bits as charged spots on games are convenient for artificial gramming, he invented several semi- the screen of a cathode ray tube. intelligence because it is easy to com- nal techniques in rote learning and Samuel managed to increase the pare a computer’s performance on generalization learning, using such number of bits stored from the cus- games with that of a person. underlying techniques as mutable tomary 512 to 2048 and to raise the Samuel also took advantage of the evaluation functions, hill climbing, mean time to failure to half an hour. fact that checker players have many and signature tables. One still hears He completed the first checker pro- volumes of annotated games, with proposals for research in this area gram on the 701, and when it was the good moves distinguished from that are less sophisticated than about to be demonstrated, Thomas J. the bad ones. Samuel’s learning pro- Samuel’s work of the 1950s. Watson, Sr., the founder and presi- gram used Lee’s Guide to Checkers to Before his machine learning work, dent of IBM, remarked that the adjust its criteria for choosing moves, Samuel had a distinguished career as demonstration would raise the price so that the program would choose an electrical engineer and also as an of IBM stock by 15 points. It did. those moves thought good by check- engineer at IBM. In addition, he was Besides engineering and computer er experts as often as possible. a manager of research in engineering science, Samuel was important for his In 1961, when Ed Feigenbaum and and science. He graduated from Empo- management work. He played a large Julian Feldman were putting together ria College in 1923. Receiving a Mas- role in establishing IBM’s European the first AI anthology, Computers and ter’s degree from the Massachusetts laboratories and setting their research Thought, they asked Samuel to include Institute of Technology in 1926, he directions, especially in Vienna and the best game the program had ever stayed on as an instructor in electri- Zurich. The Vienna Laboratory was played as an appendix to his splendid cal engineering until 1928, when he recognized for its work in computer paper on the checker player. Samuel joined Bell Telephone Laboratories. science and the Zurich laboratory for used this request as an opportunity to At Bell Labs, he worked mainly on its work in physics. challenge the Connecticut state electron tubes. Particularly notable Samuel retired from IBM in 1966 checker champion, who was ranked was his work on space charge and came to Stanford University as a number four in the nation. Samuel’s between parallel electrodes and his research professor. At Stanford, he program won. The champion provid- wartime work on TR-boxes (a switch continued his work on checkers ed annotation and commentary to that disconnects the receiver of a until his program was outclassed in the game when it was included in the radar when the radar is transmitting the 1970s. He also worked on speech anthology. and prevents the sensitive receiver recognition until the Defense As one of the earliest examples of from being destroyed by the high- Advanced Research Projects Agency nonnumeric computation, Samuel’s power transmitter). decided to concentrate its speech checker work greatly influenced the In 1946, Samuel became a professor work on one approach. He supervised instruction set of early IBM comput- of electrical engineering at the Uni- several Ph.D. theses while at Stanford. ers. The logical instructions of these versity of Illinois. He was actively Samuel’s other talents included computers were put in at his instiga- involved in the project to design one understanding inadequate documen- tion and were quickly adopted by of the first electronic computers. It tation of complicated programs and all computer designers because they was here that he conceived the idea writing clear and attractive manuals. are useful for most nonnumeric of a checker program that could beat His First Grade Tex was recently trans- computation. the world champion and demon- lated into Japanese.

As a person, Samuel was distinguished by his objectivity and his kindness in helping many people, especially in learning about the many matters in which he was an expert. Samuel remained an active computer programmer long after age forced him to give up active research. His last work, continued until he was past the age of 85, involved modify- ing programs for printing in multi- ple-type fonts on some of the Stanford Computer Science Depart- ment’s computers. Parkinson’s disease finally forced him to stop active work. We believe he was the world’s oldest active computer programmer. The computer he used tells us that he last logged into it on February 2, 1990. Samuel was a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the American Physical Society, the Institute of Radio Engineers, and the American Institute of Electrical Engi- neers and was a member of the Asso- ciation for Computing Machinery and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is survived by a brother, two daughters, and four grandchildren. The family requests that donations be sent to the Arthur L. Samuel Fellow- ship Fund, a special Stanford scholar- ship established in his honor. Contributions can be sent to Carolyn Tajnai, Assistant Chairman of the Computer Science Department, Stan- ford University, Stanford, CA 94305. —John McCarthy and Ed Feigenbaum

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