Judea Pearl

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Judea Pearl (Template:Langx; born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on belief propagation). He is also credited for developing a theory of causal and counterfactual inference based on structural models (see article on causality). In 2011, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) awarded Pearl with the Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science, "for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning".<ref name="acm-turing"/><ref name="acm_2011_Turing_award_ Judea_Pearl_press_release">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="acm">Template:ACMPortal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> He is the author of several books, including the technical Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference, and The Book of Why, a book on causality aimed at the general public.

Judea Pearl is the father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan connected with Al-Qaeda and the International Islamic Front in 2002.<ref name = "Time">Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name = "ATO">Template:Cite web</ref>

Biography

Judea Pearl was born in Tel Aviv, British Mandate for Palestine, in 1936 to Eliezer and Tova Pearl, who were Polish Jewish immigrants, grew up in Bnei Brak. His grandfather Chaim Pearl was one of Bnei Brak's founders.<ref>Judea Pearl: Reflections on Loss, Artificial Intelligence, and “Zionophobia”</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>The Audacious Joy of Judea Pearl</ref> He is a descendant of Menachem Mendel of Kotzk on his mother's side. After serving in the Israel Defense Forces and joining a kibbutz, Pearl decided to study engineering in 1956. He received a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Technion 1960. That same year, he emigrated to the United States and pursued graduate studies. He received an M.S. in electrical engineering from the Newark College of Engineering (now New Jersey Institute of Technology) in 1961, and went on to receive an M.S. in physics from Rutgers University and a PhD in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now the New York University Tandon School of Engineering) in 1965.<ref name=amturing>Template:Cite web</ref> He worked at RCA Research Laboratories (now SRI International) in Princeton, New Jersey on superconductive parametric amplifiers and storage devices and at Electronic Memories, Inc., on advanced memory systems.<ref name=amturing/> When semiconductors "wiped out" Pearl's work, as he later expressed it,<ref name="cacm">Template:Cite journal</ref> he joined UCLA's School of Engineering in 1970 and started work on probabilistic artificial intelligence. He is one of the founding editors of the Journal of Causal Inference.

Pearl is currently a professor of computer science and statistics and director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory at UCLA. He and his wife, Ruth, had three children. In addition, Template:As of, he is a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor.<ref name = "NGO">Template:Cite web</ref>

Former Israeli Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, partnered with Judea Pearl in the documentary With My Whole Broken Heart.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:YouTube</ref>

Murder of Daniel Pearl

In 2002, his son, Daniel Pearl, a journalist working for the Wall Street Journal was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, leading Judea and the other members of the family and friends to create the Daniel Pearl Foundation.<ref name="DPF">Template:Cite web</ref> On the seventh anniversary of Daniel's death, Judea wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal titled Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil: When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?.<ref name = "WSJ">Template:Cite news</ref>

Emeritus Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks quoted Judea Pearl's beliefs in a lesson on Judaism: "I asked Judea Pearl, father of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, why he was working for reconciliation between Jews and Muslims...he replied with heartbreaking lucidity, 'Hate killed my son. Therefore I am determined to fight hate.'"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Views

On his religious views, Pearl states that he is a "practicing disbeliever."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He is very connected to Jewish traditions such as holidays and kiddush on Friday night.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Pearl sits on NGO Monitor international advisory board<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> a right-wing organization based in Jerusalem that reports on non-governmental organization activity from a pro-Israel perspective.

Research

Judea Pearl is credited for "laying the foundations of modern artificial intelligence, so computer systems can process uncertainty and relate causes to effects." <ref name="bbva" /> He is one of the pioneers of Bayesian networks and the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence, and one of the first to mathematize causal modeling in the empirical sciences. His work is also intended as a high-level cognitive model. He is interested in the philosophy of science, knowledge representation, nonstandard logics, and learning. Pearl is described as "one of the giants in the field of artificial intelligence" by UCLA computer science professor Richard E. Korf.<ref name ="Korf">Template:Cite journal</ref> His work on causality has "revolutionized the understanding of causality in statistics, psychology, medicine and the social sciences" according to the Association for Computing Machinery.<ref name = "ACM">Template:Cite web</ref>

Notable contributions

  • A summary of Pearl's scientific contributions is available in a chronological account authored by Stuart J. Russell (2012).
  • An annotated bibliography of Pearl's contributions was compiled by the ACM in 2012.
  • A video describing Pearl's major contributions to AI is available here.
  • Pearl's opinion pieces, touching on Jewish identity, the war on terrorism, and the Middle East conflict can be accessed here.

Books

Awards

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See also

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References

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Further reading

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