Melanie Mitchell is an American computer scientist. She is Professor 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, inc ...

. Her major work has been in the areas of

analogical reasoning Analogy is a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share. In logic, it is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as oppose ...

complex systems A complex system is a system composed of many components that may interact with one another. 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 g ...

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 The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

under

Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born 15 February 1945) is an American cognitive and computer scientist whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, Strange loop, strange ...

and John Holland, for which she developed the Copycat 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 algebra and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical So ...

'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 ...

'' 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 the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

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 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 SourcePhi Be ...

, 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, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

. She attended

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

Providence, Rhode Island Providence () is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Rhode Island, most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. The county seat of Providence County, Rhode Island, Providence County, it is o ...

, 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'' (abbreviated as ''GEB'') is a 1979 nonfiction book by American cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter. By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Esc ...

''. 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 research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

, 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

, 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.''

Career

Mitchell is a Professor at the

. Mitchell developed the Complexity Explorer platform for the Santa Fe Institute, which offers online courses. More than 25.000 students took Mitchell's course "Introduction to Complexity". In 2018, Barbara Grosz, Dawn Song and Melanie Mitchell organised the workshop "On Crashing the Barrier of Meaning in AI". She features regularly as guest expert in the Learning Salon, an online interdisciplinary meeting about biological and artificial intelligence.

Awards

In 2020, Mitchell received the Herbert A. Simon Award (NECSI).

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)—sometimes called human‑level intelligence AI—is a type of artificial intelligence that would match or surpass human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. Some researchers argue that sta ...

, Mitchell said in 2019 that "commonsense knowledge" and "humanlike abilities for abstraction and analogy making" might constitute the final step required to build

superintelligent A superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. "Superintelligence" may also refer to a property of advanced problem-solving systems that excel in specific area ...

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

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Articles

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References

External links

Mitchell's professional homepage
at the

BrainInspired podcast 022
Melanie Mitchell: Complexity, and AI Shortcomings
Lex Fridman Podcast #61
Melanie Mitchell: Concepts, Analogies, Common Sense & Future of AI
Machine Learning Street Talk #57
Prof. Melanie Mitchell: Why AI is harder than we think * {{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