Two trailblazing pc scientists have gained the 2024 Turing Award for his or her work in reinforcement studying, a self-discipline during which machines study by way of a reward-based trial-and-error method that lets them adapt inside constrained or dynamic environments.
Andrew G. Barto, a professor emeritus on the College of Massachusetts Amherst; and Richard S. Sutton, a professor on the College of Alberta, developed key algorithms and theories by way of a seminal collection of papers beginning within the Eighties. This consists of work on a reinforcement approach referred to as temporal distinction studying; the duo later revealed a tutorial textbook referred to as Reinforcement Studying: An Introduction.
Esteemed mathematician Alan Turing (pictured above), after whom the Turing Award is known as, additionally produced a paper within the Fifties referred to as Computing Equipment and Intelligence that questioned whether or not computer systems can assume and touched on comparable ideas round studying from expertise.
In newer years, reinforcement studying has acquired extra consideration after Google Deepmind used the approach to construct an AI that defeated the world’s greatest AlphaGo gamers. And up to now few months, Chinese language AI upstart DeepSeek hit the headlines for its game-changing R1 reasoning mannequin, which leaned closely on reinforcement studying to create less expensive basis fashions.
‘Nobel Prize for computing’
The Turing Award, administered by the Affiliation for Computing Equipment (ACM), has typically been dubbed the “Nobel Prize for computing.” Nonetheless, the Nobel Prize itself has been encroaching into the computing realm, notably round AI; Geoff Hinton and John Hopfield gained the Nobel Prize in Physics for his or her work in foundational AI final 12 months. This was adopted shortly after by DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and John Jumper who have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his or her work on AlphaFold.
“Research areas ranging from cognitive science and psychology to neuroscience inspired the development of reinforcement learning, which has laid the foundations for some of the most important advances in AI and has given us greater insight into how the brain works,” ACM president Yannis Ioannidis stated in a press launch. “Barto and Sutton’s work is not a stepping stone that we have now moved on from. Reinforcement learning continues to grow and offers great potential for further advances in computing and many other disciplines. It is fitting that we are honoring them with the most prestigious award in our field.”
Different notable AI pioneers to win the Turing Award embody Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, who was awarded the prize in 2018 alongside Geoff Hinton and Yoshua Bengio for his or her work on deep neural networks.
Barto and Sutton will share the $1 million money prize, which was supplied with help from Google.
