Melanie Mitchell is an American scientist. She is the Davis Professor of Complexity at the
Santa Fe Institute
The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, includ ...
. Her major work has been in the areas of
analogical reasoning
Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (t ...
,
complex systems
A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication s ...
,
genetic algorithms
In computer science and operations research, a genetic algorithm (GA) is a metaheuristic inspired by the process of natural selection that belongs to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms (EA). Genetic algorithms are commonly used to gene ...
and
cellular automata
A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessel ...
, and her publications in those fields are frequently cited.
She received her PhD in 1990 from the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
under
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, an ...
and
John Holland, for which she developed the
Copycat
Copycat refers to a person who copies some aspect of some thing or somebody else.
Copycat may also refer to:
Intellectual property rights
* Copyright infringement, use of another’s ideas or words without permission
* Patent infringement, a v ...
cognitive architecture. She is the author of "Analogy-Making as Perception", essentially a book about Copycat. She has also critiqued
Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram (; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Ma ...
's ''
A New Kind of Science
''A New Kind of Science'' is a book by Stephen Wolfram, published by his company Wolfram Research under the imprint Wolfram Media in 2002. It contains an empirical and systematic study of computational systems such as cellular automata. Wolfram c ...
'' and showed that genetic algorithms could find better solutions to the
majority problem for one-dimensional cellular automata. She is the author of ''An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms'', a widely known introductory book published by
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962.
History
The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...
in 1996. She is also author of ''Complexity: A Guided Tour'' (Oxford University Press, 2009), which won the 2010
Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award The Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science is given annually by the Phi Beta Kappa Society to authors of significant books in the fields of science and mathematics. The award was first given in 1959 to anthropologist Loren Eiseley.
Award winners
Source ...
, and ''
Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans'' (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux).
Life
Melanie Mitchell was born and raised in
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
. She attended
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
in
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...
, where she studied physics, astronomy and mathematics. Her interest in artificial intelligence was spurred in college when she read
Douglas Hofstadter's ''
Gödel, Escher, Bach
''Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid'', also known as ''GEB'', is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter.
By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, t ...
''.
After graduating, she worked as a high school math teacher in New York City. Deciding she "needed to be" in artificial intelligence, Mitchell tracked down Douglas Hofstadter, repeatedly asking to become one of his graduate students. After finding Hofstadter's phone number at
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...
, a determined Mitchell made several calls, all of which went unanswered. She was ultimately successful in reaching Hofstadter after calling at 11 p.m., and secured an internship working on the development of Copycat.
In the fall of 1984, Mitchell followed Hofstadter to the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
, submitting a "last minute" application to the university's doctoral program. She earned her Ph.D. in 1990 with the dissertation ''Copycat: A Computer Model of High-Level Perception and Conceptual Slippage in Analogy-Making.''
Views
While expressing strong support for AI research, Mitchell has expressed concern about AI's vulnerability to hacking as well as its ability to inherit social biases. On
artificial general intelligence
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the ability of an intelligent agent to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can.
It is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research and a common topic in science fictio ...
, Mitchell said in 2019 that "commonsense knowledge" and "humanlike abilities for abstraction and analogy making" might constitute the final step required to build
superintelligent machines, but that current technology was not close to being able to solve this current problem. Mitchell believes that humanlike visual intelligence would require "general knowledge, abstraction, and language", and hypothesizes that visual understanding may have to be learned as an embodied agent rather than merely viewing pictures.
Selected publications
Books
*
*
*
*
Articles
*
*
*
References
External links
Mitchell's professional homepage*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitchell, Melanie
Cellular automatists
Complex systems scientists
Living people
Portland State University faculty
University of Michigan alumni
Santa Fe Institute people
Brown University alumni
Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel
Oregon Health & Science University faculty
Year of birth missing (living people)
Researchers of artificial life