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Terry Allen Winograd (born February 24, 1946) is an American
professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
of
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
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 consider ...
, and co-director of the Stanford
Human–Computer Interaction Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design tec ...
Group.
in 1966. He wrote
SHRDLU SHRDLU was an early natural-language understanding computer program, developed by Terry Winograd at MIT in 1968–1970. In the program, the user carries on a conversation with the computer, moving objects, naming collections and querying the ...
as a PhD thesis 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 m ...
in the years from 1968–70. In making the program Winograd was concerned with the problem of providing a computer with sufficient "understanding" to be able to use natural language. Winograd built a
blocks world The blocks world is a Automated planning and scheduling, planning domain in artificial intelligence. The algorithm is similar to a set of wooden blocks of various shapes and colors sitting on a table. The goal is to build one or more vertical sta ...
, restricting the program's intellectual world to a simulated "world of toy blocks". The program could accept commands such as, "Find a block which is taller than the one you are holding and put it into the box" and carry out the requested action using a simulated block-moving arm. The program could also respond verbally, for example, "I do not know which block you mean." The SHRDLU program can be viewed historically as one of the classic examples of how difficult it is for a programmer to build up a computer's semantic memory by hand and how limited or "brittle" such programs are.


Research

In 1973, Winograd moved to Stanford University and developed an AI-based framework for understanding natural language which was to give rise to a series of books. But only the first volume (Syntax) was ever published. "What I came to realize is that the success of the communication depends on the real intelligence on the part of the listener, and that there are many other ways of communicating with a computer that can be more effective, given that it doesn’t have the intelligence." His approach shifted away from classical Artificial Intelligence after encountering the critique of cognitivism by
Hubert Dreyfus Hubert Lederer Dreyfus (; October 15, 1929 – April 22, 2017) was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His main interests included phenomenology, existentialism and the philosophy of bo ...
and meeting with the Chilean philosopher
Fernando Flores Carlos Fernando Flores Labra (born January 9, 1943) is a Chilean engineer, entrepreneur and politician. He is a former cabinet minister of president Salvador Allende and was senator for the Arica and Parinacota and Tarapacá regions between 20 ...
. They published a critical appraisal from a perspective based in
phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
as ''Understanding Computers and Cognition: a new foundation for design'' in 1986. In the latter part of the 1980s, Winograd worked with Flores on an early form of groupware. Their approach was based on conversation-for-action analysis. In the early 1980s, Winograd was a founding member and national president of
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) was a global organization promoting the responsible use of computer technology. CPSR was incorporated in 1983 following discussions and organizing that began in 1981. It educated policymakers ...
, a group of computer scientists concerned about nuclear weapons, SDI, and increasing participation by the
U.S. Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...
in the field of computer science. In general, Winograd's work at Stanford has focused on
software design Software design is the process by which an agent creates a specification of a software artifact intended to accomplish goals, using a set of primitive components and subject to constraints. Software design may refer to either "all the activity ...
in a broader sense than
software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...
. In 1991 he founded the "Project on People, Computers and Design" in order to promote teaching and research into software design. The book "Bringing Design to Software" describes some of this work. His thesis is that software design is a distinct activity from both analysis and programming, but it should be informed by both, as well as by design practices in other professions (textile design, industrial design, etc.). Starting in 1995, Winograd served as adviser to Stanford PhD student
Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unti ...
, who was working on a research project involving web search. In 1998, Page took a leave of absence from Stanford to co-found
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
. In 2002, Winograd took a sabbatical from teaching and spent some time at Google as a visiting researcher. There, he studied the intersection of theory and practice of
human–computer interaction Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design tec ...
. Recently, Winograd has continued to research collaborative computing, including uses of
ubiquitous computing Ubiquitous computing (or "ubicomp") is a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using ...
in collaborative work. Winograd continues to do research at Stanford and teach classes and seminars in human–computer interaction. In addition to the Computer Science Dept., Winograd is associated with the
Hasso Plattner Hasso Plattner (born 21 January 1944) is a German businessman. A co-founder of SAP SE software company, he has been chairman of the supervisory board of SAP SE since May 2003. As of August 2020, ''Forbes'' reported that he possessed a net worth ...
Institute of Design at Stanford, also known as the "d.school", which he helped found.


Awards

He is a Fellow of the
Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...
(2009) and received the SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award in 2011.Lifetime Achievement Award -- Terry Winograd
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Publications

Books by Terry Winograd * 1972. ''Understanding Natural Language'' Academic Press, New York. * 1982. ''Language As A Cognitive Process, Volume 1, Syntax'' Addison-Wesley. * 1986. ''Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design'' (with
Fernando Flores Carlos Fernando Flores Labra (born January 9, 1943) is a Chilean engineer, entrepreneur and politician. He is a former cabinet minister of president Salvador Allende and was senator for the Arica and Parinacota and Tarapacá regions between 20 ...
) Ablex Publ Corp. * 1992. ''Usability: Turning Technologies into Tools'' (with Paul S. Adler) Oxford University Press. * 1996. ''Bringing Design to Software'' ACM Press.


See also

*
Winograd schema challenge The Winograd schema challenge (WSC) is a test of machine intelligence proposed by Hector Levesque, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto. Designed to be an improvement on the Turing test, it is a multiple-choice test that employs questi ...


References


External links


Oral history interview with Terry Allen Winograd
Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis—65-page interview describes his education, first in liberal arts at Colorado College and then in computer science and introduction to linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He discusses the work of
Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, ...
and others in artificial intelligence. He describes his move to the
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...
and his additional linguistic research at Xerox-PARC. Winograd compares the approach to artificial intelligence at MIT and Stanford. He describes his involvement with obtaining funding from the
Information Processing Techniques Office The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), originally "Command and Control Research",Lyon, Matthew; Hafner, Katie (1999-08-19). ''Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet'' (p. 39). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. was par ...
of the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...
.
Stanford HCI Group

Terry Winograd's faculty page

Interviewed by Morten Thanning Vendelø

Siri, Who is Terry Winograd
a 2017 '' strategy+business'' magazine "creative mind" profile of Winograd's remarkably fruitful 40-year career as a pioneer of the fraught and vital labor of human–computer interaction. {{DEFAULTSORT:Winograd, Terry 1946 births Living people Artificial intelligence researchers Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni American cognitive scientists Colorado College alumni Jewish scientists 20th-century American Jews Human–computer interaction researchers Google employees Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Communication theorists American computer scientists Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery People from Takoma Park, Maryland 21st-century American Jews