Turing Award Goes to 2 Pioneers of Artificial Intelligence
Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton developed reinforcement learning, a technique vital to chatbots like ChatGPT. In 1977, Andrew Barto, as a researcher at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, began exploring a new theory that neurons behaved like hedonists. The basic idea was that the human brain was driven by billions of nerve cells that were each trying to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. A year later, he was joined by another young researcher, Richard Sutton. Together, they worked to explain human…