Joshua Brett Tenenbaum (Josh Tenenbaum) is Professor of Computational

Cognitive Science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

. He is known for contributions to

mathematical psychology Mathematical psychology is an approach to psychology, psychological research that is based on mathematical modeling of perceptual, thought, Cognition, cognitive and motor processes, and on the establishment of law-like rules that relate quantifi ...

and Bayesian cognitive science. According to the

MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 117 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.6 billion and ...

, which named him a MacArthur Fellow in 2019, "Tenenbaum is one of the first to develop and apply probabilistic and statistical modeling to the study of human learning, reasoning, and perception, and to show how these models can explain a fundamental challenge of cognition: how our minds understand so much from so little, so quickly."

Biography

Tenenbaum grew up in California. His mother was a teacher and his father is Internet commerce pioneer Jay Martin Tenenbaum. His research direction was strongly influenced by his parents' interest in teaching and learning, and later by interactions with cognitive psychologist

Roger Shepard Roger Newland Shepard (January 30, 1929 – May 30, 2022) was an American cognitive science, cognitive scientist and author of the "universal law of generalization" (1987). He was considered a father of research on spatial relations. He studied m ...

, during his years at Yale. Tenenbaum received his undergraduate degree in

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

in 1993, and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1999. His work focuses on analyzing

probabilistic Probability is a branch of mathematics and statistics concerning events and numerical descriptions of how likely they are to occur. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1; the larger the probability, the more likely an e ...

inference Inferences are steps in logical reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word '' infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinct ...

as the engine of human

cognition Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

and as a means to develop

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

. According to the

, "Tenenbaum is one of the first to develop and apply probabilistic and statistical modeling to the study of human learning, reasoning, and perception, and to show how these models can explain a fundamental challenge of cognition: how our minds understand so much from so little, so quickly." At MIT, Tenebaum is a professor of computational cognitive science and a member of CSAIL, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He leads MIT's Computational Cognitive Science lab and is also head of an AI project called the MIT Quest for Intelligence. In 2018, ''R & D Magazine'' named Tenenbaum their "Innovator of the Year." In 2019, Tenenbaum was named a MacArthur Fellow. The MacArthur webpage describes his work as follows: "Combining computational models with behavioral experiments to shed light on human learning, reasoning, and perception, and exploring how to bring artificial intelligence closer to the capabilities of human thinking." Tenenbaum's recent research includes teaching AI systems to imitate human face-recognition methods and programming AI to understand cause and effect.

Publications

Tenenbaum has a list of his publications on hi
MIT web page
and o
Google Scholar

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tenenbaum, Joshua Living people Yale University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Fellows of the Society of Experimental Psychologists American artificial intelligence researchers MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory people 1972 births