Arthur Lee Samuel (December 5, 1901 – July 29, 1990) was an American pioneer in the field of computer gaming and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

. He popularized the term "

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

" in 1959. 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). 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.

Biography

Samuel was born on December 5, 1901, in

Emporia, Kansas Emporia is a city in and the county seat of Lyon County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 24,139. Emporia lies between Topeka and Wichita at the intersection of U.S. Route 50 with Interstates 33 ...

, and graduated from College of Emporia in Kansas in 1923. He received a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1926, and taught for two years as instructor. In 1928, he joined

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...

, where he worked mostly on

vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric potential difference has been applied. The type known as ...

s, including improvements of

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, Marine radar, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor v ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. He developed a gas-discharge transmit-receive switch (TR tube) that allowed a single antenna to be used for both transmitting and receiving. After the war he moved to the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Un ...

, where he initiated the ILLIAC project, but left before its first computer was complete. Samuel went to IBM in

Poughkeepsie, New York Poughkeepsie ( ), officially the City of Poughkeepsie, separate from the Town of Poughkeepsie around it) is a city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeeps ...

, in 1949, where he would conceive and carry out his most successful work. He is credited with one of the first software

hash table In computing, a hash table, also known as hash map, is a data structure that implements an associative array or dictionary. It is an abstract data type that maps keys to values. A hash table uses a hash function to compute an ''index'', ...

s, and influencing early research in using

transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...

s for computers at IBM. At IBM he made the first checkers program on IBM's first commercial computer, the

IBM 701 The IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer and its first series production mainframe computer, which was announced to the public on May ...

. 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. 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. In 1966, Samuel retired from IBM and became a professor at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

, where he worked the remainder of his life. He worked with

Donald Knuth Donald Ervin Knuth ( ; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer sc ...

on the TeX project, including writing some of the documentation. He continued to write software past his 88th birthday. He was given the

Computer Pioneer Award The Computer Pioneer Award was established in 1981 by the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society to recognize and honor the vision of those people whose efforts resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the computer industry. ...

by the IEEE Computer Society in 1987. He died of complications from

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms beco ...

on July 29, 1990.

Computer checkers (draughts) development

Samuel is most known within the AI community for his groundbreaking work in computer checkers in 1959, and seminal research on

, beginning in 1949. He graduated from MIT and taught at MIT and UIUC from 1946 to 1949. He believed teaching computers to play games was very fruitful for developing tactics appropriate to general problems, and he chose checkers as it is relatively simple though has a depth of strategy. The main driver of the machine was a

search tree In computer science, a search tree is a tree data structure used for locating specific keys from within a set. In order for a tree to function as a search tree, the key for each node must be greater than any keys in subtrees on the left, and less ...

of the board positions reachable from the current state. Since he had only a very limited amount of available computer memory, Samuel implemented what is now called

alpha-beta pruning Alphabeta is an Israeli musical group. Alphabeta or Alpha Beta may also refer to: *The Greek alphabet, from ''Alpha'' (Αα) and ''Beta'' (Ββ), the first two letters *Alpha Beta, a former chain of Californian supermarkets *Alpha and beta anomers ...

. Instead of searching each path until it came to 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. It took into account such things 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 Minimax (sometimes MinMax, MM or saddle point) is a decision rule used in artificial intelligence, decision theory, game theory, statistics, and philosophy for ''mini''mizing the possible loss for a worst case (''max''imum loss) scenario. When ...

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. Samuel also designed various mechanisms by which his program could become better. In what he called

rote learning Rote learning is a memorization technique based on repetition. The method rests on the premise that the recall of repeated material becomes faster the more one repeats it. Some of the alternatives to rote learning include meaningful 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.Schaeffer, Jonathan. ''One Jump Ahead: Challenging Human Supremacy in Checkers'', 1997,2009, Springer, . Chapter 6.

Awards

* 1987.

. : ''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. * :: Pioneer of

. :: 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 Repor
STAN-CS-83-985
(November 1983). :: Senior member in TeX community.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Samuel, Arthur 1901 births 1990 deaths American computer scientists Artificial intelligence researchers College of Emporia alumni IBM Research computer scientists IBM employees Stanford University Department of Computer Science faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Scientists at Bell Labs University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign people People from Emporia, Kansas