Yorick Wilks

FBCS Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957 BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, known as the British Computer Society until 2009, is a professional body and a learned society that represents those working in infor ...

(born 27 October 1939), a British computer scientist, is emeritus professor of artificial intelligence at the

University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...

, visiting professor of artificial intelligence at

Gresham College Gresham College is an institution of higher learning located at Barnard's Inn Hall off Holborn in Central London, England. It does not enroll students or award degrees. It was founded in 1596 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, and hosts ove ...

(a post created especially for him), Former senior research fellow at the

Oxford Internet Institute The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) is a multi-disciplinary department of social and computer science dedicated to the study of information, communication, and technology, and is part of the Social Sciences Division of the University of Oxford ...

, senior scientist at the

Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition The Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC) is a not-for-profit research institute of the State University System of Florida, with locations in Pensacola and Ocala, Florida. IHMC scientists and engineers investigate a broad range ...

, and a member of the

Epiphany Philosophers The Epiphany Philosophers was a group of philosophers, scientists and religious (priests, nuns and monks) who met regularly and published between 1950 and 2010. The focus of their endeavours was on the relationship between science and religion. Fou ...

. __TOC__

Biography

Wilks was educated at Torquay Boys' Grammar School, followed by

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College (officially "The Master, Fellows and Scholars of the College or Hall of Valence-Mary") is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 ...

, where he read Philosophy, joined the

and obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree (1968) under Professor

R. B. Braithwaite Richard Bevan Braithwaite (15 January 1900 – 21 April 1990) was an English philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Life Braithwaite was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, son of th ...

for the thesis 'Argument and Proof'; he was an early pioneer in meaning-based approaches to the understanding of natural language content by computers. His main early contribution in the 1970s was called "Preference Semantics" (Wilks, 1973; Wilks and Fass, 1992), an algorithmic method for assigning the "most coherent" interpretation to a sentence in terms of having the maximum number of internal preferences of its parts (normally verbs or adjectives) satisfied. That early work was hand-coded with semantic entries (of the order of some hundreds) as was normal at the time, but since then has led to the empirical determinations of preferences (chiefly of English verbs) in the 1980s and 1990s. A key component of the notion of preference in semantics was that the interpretation of an utterance is not a well- or ill-formed notion, as was argued in Chomskyan approaches, such as those of

Jerry Fodor Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modu ...

and

Jerrold Katz Jerrold Jacob Katz (14 July 19327 February 2002) was an American philosopher and linguist. Biography After receiving a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University in 1960, Katz became a Research Associate in Linguistics at the Massachusetts Ins ...

. It was rather that a semantic interpretation was the best available, even though some preferences might not be satisfied. So, in "The machine answered the question with a low whine" the agent of "answer" does not satisfy that verb's preference for a human answerer—which would cause it to be deemed ill-formed by Fodor and Katz—but is accepted as sub-optimal or metaphorical, and, now, conventional. The function of the algorithm is not to determine well-formedness at all but to make the optimal selection of word-senses to participate in the overall interpretation. Thus, in "The Pole answered..." the system will always select the human sense of the agent and not the inanimate one if it gives a more coherent interpretation overall. Preference Semantics is thus some of the earliest computational work—with programs run at Systems Development Corporation in Santa Monica in 1967 in

LISP A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lisping ...

on an IBM360—in the now established field of

word sense disambiguation Word-sense disambiguation (WSD) is the process of identifying which sense of a word is meant in a sentence or other segment of context. In human language processing and cognition, it is usually subconscious/automatic but can often come to consci ...

. This approach was used in the first operational

machine translation Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...

system based principally on meaning structures and built by Wilks at

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 ...

in the early 1970s (Wilks, 1973) at the same time and place as

Roger Schank Roger Carl Schank (born 1946) is an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur. Beginning in the late 1960s, he pioneered conceptual dependency theory (within the ...

was applying his "Conceptual Dependency" approach to machine translation. The LISP code of Wilks' system was in

The Computer Museum, Boston The Computer Museum was a Boston, Massachusetts, museum that opened in 1979 and operated in three locations until 1999. It was once referred to as TCM and is sometimes called the Boston Computer Museum. When the museum closed and its space became p ...

. Yorick Wilks has been elected a fellow of the American and European Associations for Artificial Intelligence, of the

British Computer Society Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957 BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, known as the British Computer Society until 2009, is a professional body and a learned society that represents those working in infor ...

, a member of the UK Computing Research Committee, and a permanent member of ICCL, the

International Committee on Computational Linguistics The International Committee on Computational Linguistics (ICCL) was founded by Dr. David Hays of the RAND Corporation in 1965 to promote the biennial International Conference on Computational Linguistics, which since the third conference in Stock ...

. He is professor of

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 re ...

at the

and a senior research fellow at the

. In 1991 he received a Defense Advanced Projects Agency grant on interlingual pragmatics-based machine translation and in 1994 he received a grant by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to investigate in the field of large-scale information extraction (LaSIE); in the following years he would obtained more grants to carry on exploring the field of information extraction (AVENTINUS, ECRAN, PASTA...). In the 1990s Wilks also became interested in modelling human-computer dialogue and the team led by David Levy and him as chief researcher won the

Loebner Prize The Loebner Prize was an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to the computer programs considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The prize is reported as defunct since 2020. The format of the competition was tha ...

in 1997. He was the founding director of the EU funded

Companions Project Companion may refer to: Relationships Currently * Any of several interpersonal relationships such as friend or acquaintance * A domestic partner, akin to a spouse * Sober companion, an addiction treatment coach * Companion (caregiving), a caregi ...

on creating long-term computer companions for people. At his

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

in 2007 at the

in London a volume of his own papers was presented along with a volume of essays in his honour. He was awarded the Antonio Zampolli prize in honour of his lifetime work at the

LREC The International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation is an international conference organised by the European Language Resources Association every other year (on even years) with the support of institutions and organisations involved ...

'2008 conference on 28 May 2008, and the Lifetime Achievement Award at the ACL'2008 conference on 18 June 2008. In 2009, he was awarded the

Lovelace Medal The Lovelace Medal was established by the British Computer Society in 1998, and is presented to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the understanding or advancement of computing. It is the top award in computing in the UK. Award ...

, its annual award for research achievement, and was awarded the Fellowship 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 ...

. In 1998, Wilks became head of the Department of Computer Science of the University of Sheffield, where he had started working in the year 1993 as professor of artificial intelligence, a post he still holds. In 1993 he became the founding director of the Institute of Language, Speech and Hearing (ILASH). Wilks also set up the Natural Language Processing Group of the University of Sheffield. In 1994 he (along with Rob Gaizauskas and Hamish Cunningham) designed

GATE A gate or gateway is a point of entry to or from a space enclosed by walls. The word derived from old Norse "gat" meaning road or path; But other terms include ''yett and port''. The concept originally referred to the gap or hole in the wall ...

, an advanced NLP architecture that has been widely distributed.

National Life Stories National Life Stories is an independent charitable trust and limited company (registered as the ‘National Life Story Collection’) based within the British Library Oral History section, whose key focus and expertise is oral history fieldwork. S ...

conducted an oral history interview (C1672/24) with Yorick Wilks in 2016 for its Science and Religion collection held by the British Library.National Life Stories, 'Wilks, Yorick (1 of 1) National Life Stories Collection: Science and Religion', The British Library Board, 2016
Retrieved 9 October 2017

Relevant data

Awards

Yorick Wilks has received many awards: *(2009) Elected Fellow of the

*(2009)

by the

*(2008) Zampolli Prize ( ELRA, awarded at

in Marrakech, Morocco) *(2008) Lifetime Achievement Award (

Association for Computational Linguistics The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) is a scientific and professional organization for people working on natural language processing. Its namesake conference is one of the primary high impact conferences for natural language proces ...

, in Columbus) *(2006) Visiting Professor,

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

*(2004) Elected to UK Computing Research Committee *(2004) Elected Fellow, British Computer Society *(2003) Visiting Fellow,

*(1998) Elected Fellow of European Association for Artificial Intelligence *(1997) Elected Fellow,

EPSRC The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a British Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical sciences, mainly to universi ...

College of Computing *(1991) Visiting Fellow,

Trinity Hall, Cambridge Trinity Hall (formally The College or Hall of the Holy Trinity in the University of Cambridge) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is the fifth-oldest surviving college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by ...

*(1991) Elected Fellow of the

American Association for Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

*(1983)

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

Travel Fellowship *(1983)

Commonwealth of Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

Visiting Professor *(1981) Visiting Sloan Fellow,

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

*(1980) Invited Participant in the Nobel Symposium on Language, Stockholm *(1979)

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

Senior Scientist Fellowship *(1979) Visiting Sloan Fellow,

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

*(1975) SRC Senior Visiting Fellowship,

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

Membership

Yorick Wilks is an active member of the following associations:Yorick Wilks' profile at the University of Sheffield's web page *Association for Computational Linguistics *Society for the Study of AI and Simulation of Behaviour *Association for Computing Machinery *Cognitive Science Society *British Society for the Philosophy of Science *American Association for Artificial Intelligence *Aristotelean Society

Selected works

Books

*Wilks, Y. (2019) ''Artificial Intelligence: Modern Magic or Dangerous Future?''.Icon Books. *Wilks, Y. (2015) ''Machine Translation: its scope and limits''. Springer *Wilks, Y (ed.) (2010) ''Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key Social, Psychological and Design issues''. John Benjamins; Amsterdam *Wilks, Y., Brewster, C. (2009) ''Natural Language Processing as a Foundation of the Semantic Web''. Now Press: London. *Wilks, Y. (2007) Words and Intelligence I, Selected papers by Yorick Wilks. In K. Ahmad, C. Brewster & M. Stevenson (eds.), Springer: Dordrecht. *Wilks, Y. (ed. and with introduction and commentaries). (2006) Language, cohesion and form: selected papers of Margaret Masterman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Wilks, Y., Nirenburg, S., Somers, H. (eds.) (2003) Readings in Machine Translation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. *Wilks, Y.(ed.). (1999) Machine Conversations. Kluwer: New York. *Wilks, Y., Slator, B., Guthrie, L. (1996) Electric Words: dictionaries, computers and meanings. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. *Ballim, A., Wilks, Y. (1991) Artificial Believers. Norwood, NJ: Erlbaum. *Wilks, Y.(ed.). (1990) Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing. Norwood, NJ: Erlbaum. *Wilks, Y., Partridge, D. (eds. plus three YW chapters and an introduction). (1990) The Foundations of Artificial Intelligence: a sourcebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Wilks, Y., Sparck-Jones, K.(eds.). (1984) Automatic Natural Language Processing, paperback edition. New York: Wiley. Originally published by Ellis Horwood. *Wilks, Y., Charniak, E. (eds and principal authors). (1976) Computational Semantics—an Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Understanding. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Reprinted in Russian, in the series Progress in Linguistics, Moscow, 1981. *Wilks, Y. (1972) Grammar, Meaning and the Machine Analysis of Language. London and Boston: Routledge.

References

External links

Yorick Wilks' profile at the University of Sheffield DCS

Yorick Wilks' Profile at Gresham College

Yorick Wilks' subsite at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Yorick Wilks video on Voices from Oxford (VOA)

Second VOA video
* ] *
A seminar by Yorick Wilks
at the Brandeis University (Department of Computer Science)]
Lecture by Professor Yorick Wilks
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilks, Yorick Alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge Artificial intelligence researchers British computer scientists Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellows of the British Computer Society Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Living people People educated at Torquay Boys' Grammar School 1939 births Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition people Fellows of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence Natural language processing researchers Computer scientists