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Andrew G. Barto and Richard S. Sutton

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Two trailblazing calculator scientists have won the 2024Turing Awardfor their employment in reinforcement acquisition , a field of study in which motorcar learn through a reward - base trial - and - misplay glide path that let them accommodate within constrained or dynamical environments .

Andrew G. Barto , a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst ; andRichard S. Sutton , a professor at the University of Alberta , arise key algorithm and theory through a seminal series of papersstarting in the 1980s . This includes study on a reinforcement technique calledtemporal difference of opinion learning ; the duo later published an academic textbook called “ Reinforcement Learning : An presentation . ”

honored mathematician Alan Turing ( show above ) , after whom the Turing Award is named , also bring forth a paper in the 1950s called “ Computing Machinery and Intelligence ” that question whether computer can think and touched on similar conception around learning from experience .

In recent years , reinforcement learning has received more attention after Google DeepMind used the technique to work up an AI thatdefeated the world ’s best AlphaGo players . And in the past few month , Chinese AI upstart DeepSeekhit the headline for its game - switch R1 abstract thought example , which slant heavily on reenforcement encyclopaedism to create more cost - effective base models .

“Nobel Prize for computing”

The Turing Award , administered by the Association for Computing Machinery ( ACM ) , has often been dubbed the “ Nobel Prize for computing . ” However , the Nobel Prize itself has been encroaching into the computing kingdom , especially around AI ; Geoff Hinton and John Hopfieldwon the Nobel Prize in Physicsfor their piece of work in foundational AI last year . This was keep abreast before long after by DeepMind ’s Demis Hassabis and John Jumper , who were present the Nobel Prize in Chemistryfor theirwork on AlphaFold .

“ Research areas ranging from cognitive science and psychology to neuroscience inspired the growing of reinforcement encyclopaedism , which has laid the foundations for some of the most important betterment in AI and has given us greater insight into how the brain works , ” ACM president Yannis Ioannidis saidin a pressure release . “ Barto and Sutton ’s study is not a stepping Isidor Feinstein Stone that we have now moved on from . reenforcement learning keep on to grow and offers dandy potential for further improvement in computing and many other disciplines . It is meet that we are abide by them with the most prestigious award in our theatre of operations . ”

Other notable AI pioneers to gain the Turing Award includeMeta ’s chief AI scientist   Yann LeCun , whowas grant the prize in 2018alongside Geoff Hinton and Yoshua Bengio for their study on deep neuronal networks .

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Barto and Sutton will share the $ 1 million hard currency prize , which was provide with living from Google .