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PROFESSOR JOHN E. LAIRD
John E. Laird, Ph.D., FAAAI, FACM is
Professor of
Computer Science and Engineering Division,
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department,
College of Engineering,
University of Michigan and
Member of the
UM Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
He is also a founder of
Soar Technology, an Ann Arbor company
specializing in
creating autonomous AI entities.
Along with Paul Rosenbloom and Allen Newell, he created the
Soar
cognitive
architecture at Carnegie Mellon University.
His major research interest is in creating human-level artificial
intelligent entities, with an emphasis on the underlying cognitive
architecture. A major challenge is to create systems that can work on a
broad range of problems, using a wide variety of methods, knowledge, and
learning techniques. As part of his research, John studies both
artificial and
natural intelligence.
Since 1981, his work has centered on
the
development and use of
Soar, a general cognitive architecture. Over the
years, this has led to research in both AI and cognitive science. Within
AI his work has included research in general problem solving, the
genesis
of the weak methods, the origins of subgoals, general learning
mechanisms, interacting with external environments, learning by
experience and by instruction, and integrating reactivity, planning, and
learning, all in the service of constructing complete autonomous
intelligent agents.
In the past, he's done some work on
developing
human-level AI agents for
interactive computer games. Within cognitive
science, his early research has concentrated on detailed modeling of
human behavior (reaction times and error rates) in visual attention,
concept acquisition, and dual tasks. Currently he is concentrating more
on
high-level cognition, although he does some low-level modeling off and
on.
Most recently, John and his students are extending Soar to include
reinforcement learning, episodic memory, semantic memory, clustering,
mental imagery, and emotion-inspired processing.
John authored
Extending the Soar Cognitive Architecture,
The Importance of Action History in Decision Making and Reinforcement
Learning,
Towards Incorporating Visual Imagery into a Cognitive
Architecture,
Extending Cognitive Architecture with Episodic Memory,
Computational Modeling of Mood and Feeling from Emotion,
A Cognitive Architecture Theory of Comprehension and
Appraisal, and
Redux: Example-Driven Diagrammatic Tools for Rapid Knowledge
Acquisition,
and coedited
The Soar Papers: Research on Integrated
Intelligence.
John earned his B.S. in Communication and Computer Science from the
University of Michigan
in 1975 and his Ph.D.
in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1983. He was a
member of research staff at Xerox Palo
Alto Research Center from 1984 to 1986.
He is a fellow of AAAI and
ACM.
He was general chair for the International Conference on Cognitive
Modeling (ICCM), 2007. He was general chair for the Artificial
Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE)
June 2006.
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