Oliver Gordon Selfridge (10 May 1926 – 3 December 2008) was a mathematician and computer scientist who pioneered the early foundations of modern

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

. He is mostly known for his 1959 paper, ''Pandemonium: A paradigm for learning'' describing what's now known as the Pandemonium Architecture. He has been called the "Father of Machine Perception."

Biography

Selfridge, born in England, was a grandson of

Harry Gordon Selfridge Harry Gordon Selfridge, Sr. (11 January 1858 – 8 May 1947) was an American retail magnate who founded the London-based department store Selfridges. The early years of his leadership led to his becoming one of the most respected and wealthy re ...

, the founder of

Selfridges Selfridges, also known as Selfridges & Co., is a chain of upmarket department stores in the United Kingdom that is operated by Selfridges Retail Limited. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge in 1908. The historic Daniel Burnham-designed Self ...

department stores. His father was Harry Gordon Selfridge Jr. and his mother was a clerk at Selfridge's store. His parents had met, fallen in love, married and had children all in secret, and Oliver never met his grandfather, Harry Sr. He was educated at

Malvern College Malvern College is a Private schools in the United Kingdom, fee-charging coeducational boarding school, boarding and day school in Malvern, Worcestershire, Malvern, Worcestershire, England. It is a public school (United Kingdom), public school ...

, and, upon moving to the US, at

Middlesex School Middlesex School (informally known as MX) is a Mixed-sex education, coeducational, Private school, independent, and Nonsectarian, non-sectarian boarding school, boarding secondary school located in Concord, Massachusetts, Concord, Middlesex Count ...

Concord, Massachusetts Concord () is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. In the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the town population was 18,491. The United States Census Bureau considers Concord part of Greater Boston. The town center is n ...

, before earning an S.B. from

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 ...

in mathematics in 1945. He then became a graduate student of

Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and philosopher. He became a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener late ...

, but did not write up his doctoral research and never earned a Ph.D.

Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive scientist, cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research in artificial intelligence (AI). He co-founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...

considered Selfridge to be one of his mentors, and Selfridge was one of the 11 attendees, with Minsky, of the

Dartmouth workshop The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence was a 1956 summer workshop widely consideredKline, Ronald R., "Cybernetics, Automata Studies and the Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence", ''IEEE Annals of the History ...

that is considered the founding event of

as a field. Selfridge wrote important early papers on

neural networks A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either Cell (biology), biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a netwo ...

pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the task of assigning a class to an observation based on patterns extracted from data. While similar, pattern recognition (PR) is not to be confused with pattern machines (PM) which may possess PR capabilities but their p ...

, and

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 ( ...

, and his "Pandemonium" paper (1959) is generally recognized as a classic in

. In it, Selfridge introduced the notion of "demons" that record events as they occur, recognize patterns in those events, and may trigger subsequent events according to patterns they recognize. Over time, this idea gave rise to

aspect-oriented programming In computing, aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a programming paradigm that aims to increase modularity by allowing the separation of cross-cutting concerns. It does so by adding behavior to existing code (an advice) ''without'' modifying t ...

. In 1968, in their formative paper "The Computer as a Communication Device",

J. C. R. Licklider Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (; March 11, 1915 – June 26, 1990), known simply as J. C. R. or "Lick", was an American psychologistMiller, G. A. (1991), "J. C. R. Licklider, psychologist", ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of Am ...

and Robert Taylor introduced a concept known as an OLIVER (On-Line Interactive Vicarious Expediter and Responder), which was named in honor of Selfridge. Selfridge spent his career at

Lincoln Laboratory The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and dev ...

(where he was Associate Director of

Project MAC Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in ...

Bolt, Beranek and Newman Raytheon BBN (originally Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc.) is an American research and development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brown Medal, in 1999 BBN received the ...

, and GTE Laboratories where he became Chief Scientist. He served on the

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

Advisory Board for 20 years, chairing the Data Processing Panel. In 1991 he was elected a Fellow of the

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

. Selfridge retired in 1993. In 2015, Duncan Campbell identified Selfridge as his "best source" for Campbell's 1980 reporting on US

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

wiretapping activity at

RAF Menwith Hill Royal Air Force Menwith Hill (RAF Menwith Hill) is a Royal Air Force List of Royal Air Force stations, station near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, which provides communications and intelligence support services to the United Kingdom and th ...

in England. Campbell described this operation in ''

New Statesman ''The New Statesman'' (known from 1931 to 1964 as the ''New Statesman and Nation'') is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first c ...

'' as a "billion dollar phone tap". Selfridge also authored four children's books: ''Sticks'', ''Fingers Come In Fives'', ''All About Mud'', and ''Trouble With Dragons''. Selfridge was married and divorced twice and is survived by two daughters and two sons.

Biography

See also

Notes

Further reading