Terry Winograd
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, and co-director of the Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Group. He is known within the philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
and artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
fields for his work on natural language
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
using the SHRDLU
SHRDLU
SHRDLU was an early natural language understanding computer program, developed by Terry Winograd at MIT from 1968-1970. In it, the user carries on a conversation with the computer, moving objects, naming collections and querying the state of a simplified "blocks world", essentially a virtual box...
program.
Life and work
SHRDLUSHRDLU
SHRDLU was an early natural language understanding computer program, developed by Terry Winograd at MIT from 1968-1970. In it, the user carries on a conversation with the computer, moving objects, naming collections and querying the state of a simplified "blocks world", essentially a virtual box...
was written as a PhD thesis at MIT in the years from 1968-70. In making the program Winograd was concerned with the problem of providing a computer with sufficient "understanding" to be able to use natural language. Winograd built a blocks world
Blocks world
The blocks world is one of the most famous planning domains in artificial intelligence. The program was created by Terry Winograd and is a limited-domain natural-language system that can understand typed commands and move blocks around on a surface....
, restricting the program's intellectual world to a simulated "world of toy blocks". The program could accept commands such as, "Find a block which is taller than the one you are holding and put it into the box" and carry out the requested action using a simulated block-moving arm. The program could also respond verbally, for example, "I do not know which block you mean." The SHRDLU program can be viewed historically as one of the classic examples of how difficult it is for a programmer to build up a computer's semantic memory by hand and how limited or "brittle" such programs are.
In 1973, Winograd moved to Stanford University and developed an AI-based framework for understanding natural language which was to give rise to a series of books. But only the first volume (Syntax) was ever published. "What I came to realize is that the success of the communication depends on the real intelligence on the part of the listener, and that there are many other ways of communicating with a computer that can be more effective, given that it doesn’t have the intelligence."
His approach shifted away from classical Artificial Intelligence after encountering the critique of cognitivism by Hubert Dreyfus
Hubert Dreyfus
Hubert Lederer Dreyfus is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley....
and meeting with the Chilean philosopher Fernando Flores
Fernando Flores
Carlos Fernando Flores Labra is a Chilean engineer, entrepreneur and politician. He is a former cabinet minister of president Salvador Allende and was senator for the Arica and Parinacota and Tarapacá regions between 2001 and 2009...
. They published a critical appraisal from a perspective based in phenomenology as Understanding Computers and Cognition: a new foundation for design in 1987. In the latter part of the 1980s, Winograd worked with Flores on an early form of groupware. Their approach was based on conversation-for-action analysis.
In the early 1980s, Winograd was a founding member and national president of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility is a global organization promoting the responsible use of computer technology. in 1983 . It educates policymakers and the public on a wide range of issues...
, a group of computer scientists concerned about nuclear weapons, SDI
Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic...
, and increasing participation by the U.S. Department of Defense in the field of computer science.
In general, Winograd's work at Stanford has focused on software design
Software design
Software design is a process of problem solving and planning for a software solution. After the purpose and specifications of software are determined, software developers will design or employ designers to develop a plan for a solution...
in a broader sense than software engineering
Software engineering
Software Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...
. In 1991 he founded the "Project on People, Computers and Design" in order to promote teaching and research into software design. The book "Bringing Design to Software" describes some of this work. His thesis is that software design is a distinct activity from both analysis and programming, but it should be informed by both, as well as by design practices in other professions (textile design, industrial design, etc).
Starting in 1995, Winograd served as adviser to Stanford PhD student Larry Page, who was working on a research project involving web search. In 1998, Page took a leave of absence from Stanford to co-found Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
. In 2002, Winograd took a sabbatical from teaching and spent some time at Google as a visiting researcher. There, he studied the intersection of theory and practice of human-computer interaction.
Recently, Winograd has continued to research collaborative computing, including uses of ubiquitous computing
Ubiquitous computing
Ubiquitous computing is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In the course of ordinary activities, someone "using" ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems...
in collaborative work.
Today, Winograd continues to do research at Stanford and teach classes and seminars in human-computer interaction. In addition to the Computer Science Dept., Winograd is associated with the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, also known as the "d.school", which he helped found.
He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
(2009).
See also
- Marvin MinskyMarvin MinskyMarvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
- Seymour PapertSeymour PapertSeymour Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language....
- Gerry Sussman
- Blocks worldBlocks worldThe blocks world is one of the most famous planning domains in artificial intelligence. The program was created by Terry Winograd and is a limited-domain natural-language system that can understand typed commands and move blocks around on a surface....
- Fernando FloresFernando FloresCarlos Fernando Flores Labra is a Chilean engineer, entrepreneur and politician. He is a former cabinet minister of president Salvador Allende and was senator for the Arica and Parinacota and Tarapacá regions between 2001 and 2009...
Publications
Books by Terry Winograd- 1972. Understanding Natural Language Academic Press, New York.
- 1982. Language As A Cognitive Process, Volume 1, Syntax Addison-Wesley.
- 1986. Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design (with Fernando FloresFernando FloresCarlos Fernando Flores Labra is a Chilean engineer, entrepreneur and politician. He is a former cabinet minister of president Salvador Allende and was senator for the Arica and Parinacota and Tarapacá regions between 2001 and 2009...
) Ablex Publ Corp. - 1992. Usability: Turning Technologies into Tools (with Paul S. Adler) Oxford University Press.
- 1996. Bringing Design to Software ACM Press.
External links
- Oral history interview with Terry Allen Winograd Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis—65-page interview describes his education in computer science and introduction to linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He discusses the work of Marvin MinskyMarvin MinskyMarvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
and others in artificial intelligence. He describes his move to the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and his additional linguistic research at Xerox-PARCPARCPARC or Parc may refer to:* PARC , the Palo Alto Research Center * PARC Management, a theme park and entertainment venue operator...
. Winograd compares the approach to artificial intelligence at MIT and Stanford. He describes his involvement with obtaining funding from the Information Processing Techniques Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects AgencyDefense Advanced Research Projects AgencyThe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military...
. - Stanford HCI Group
- Terry Winograd's faculty page
- Interviewed by Morten Thanning Vendel