Raj Reddy

Dabbala Rajagopal "Raj" Reddy (born 13 June 1937) is an Indian-American computer scientist and a winner of the Turing Award. He is one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mellon for over 50 years.<ref name=pit-postgazette /> He was the founding director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He was instrumental in helping to create Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies in India, to cater to the educational needs of the low-income, gifted, rural youth. He was the founding chairman of International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. He was the first person of Asian origin to receive the Turing Award, in 1994, sometimes known as the Nobel Prize of computer science, for his work in the field of artificial intelligence.

Early life and education

Raj Reddy was born in a Telugu family<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> in Katur village of Chittoor district of present-day Andhra Pradesh, India. His father, Sreenivasulu Reddy, was a landowner, and his mother, Pitchamma, was a homemaker. He was the first in his family to attend college.

After graduating with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from College of Engineering, Guindy (presently Anna University, Chennai, affiliated to University of Madras), he went to Australia as an intern. While a student at the University of New South Wales, he started using an English Electric Deuce Mark II computer (Vacuum Tube, Mercury Delay line memory with punch card I/O). After graduating with an MTech degree from UNSW in 1960, he joined IBM where he worked as an Applied Science representative. In 1963 he joined Stanford University, graduating in 1966 as the first PhD in AI under John McCarthy. After 3 years on the Faculty at Stanford, he joined Carnegie Mellon University to work with AI pioneers Allen Newell and Herb Simon.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Career

Reddy is the University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics and Moza Bint Nasser Chair at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. From 1960, he worked for IBM in Australia.<ref name=pit-postgazette>Template:Cite news</ref> He was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University from 1966 to 1969.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He joined the Carnegie Mellon faculty as an associate professor of Computer Science in 1969. He became a full professor in 1973 and a university professor, in 1984.<ref name=cs50>Template:Cite web</ref>

He was the founding director of the Robotics Institute<ref name=ri-history>Template:Cite web</ref> from 1979<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> to 1991<ref name=rr>Template:Cite web</ref> and the Dean of School of Computer Science from 1991 to 1999. As a dean of SCS, he helped create the Language Technologies Institute, Human Computer Interaction Institute, Center for Automated Learning and Discovery (since renamed as the Machine Learning Department), and the Institute for Software Research. He is the chairman of Governing Council of IIIT Hyderabad.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was the founding Chancellor (2008-2019) of Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Reddy was a co-chair<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1999 to 2001.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was one of the founders of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and was its president from 1987 to 1989.<ref name=foundations_GC_AI>Template:Cite journal</ref> He served on the International board of governors of Peres Center for Peace in Israel.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> He served as a member of the governing councils of EMRI<ref name=EMRI>Template:Cite web</ref> and HMRI<ref name=HMRI>Template:Cite web</ref> which use technology-enabled solutions to provide cost-effective health care coverage to rural population in India.

AI Research

Reddy's early research was conducted at the AI labs at Stanford, first as a graduate student and later as an assistant professor, and at CMU since 1969.<ref name=CMUfaculty>Template:Cite web</ref> His AI research concentrated on perceptual and motor aspect of intelligence such as speech, language, vision and robotics. Over a span of five decades, Reddy and his colleagues created several demonstrations of spoken language systems, e.g., voice control of a robot,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Citation</ref> large vocabulary connected speech recognition,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> speaker independent speech recognition,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>A Computer with Hands, Eyes, and Ears, McCarthy, Earnest, Reddy, and Vicens, Proceedings of the AFIPS '68, 9–11 December 1968, Fall Joint Computer Conference, Part I December 1968 Pages 329–338</ref><ref>Archived at GhostarchiveTemplate:Cbignore and the Wayback MachineTemplate:Cbignore: Template:Cite webTemplate:Cbignore</ref> and unrestricted vocabulary dictation.<ref>Introduction to Template:Cite book</ref> Reddy and his colleagues have made seminal contributions to Task Oriented Computer Architectures,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Analysis of Natural Scenes,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Universal Access to Information,<ref name=info>Template:Cite web</ref> and Autonomous Robotic Systems.<ref name = ARS>Template:Cite journal</ref> Hearsay I<ref>Archived at GhostarchiveTemplate:Cbignore and the Wayback MachineTemplate:Cbignore: Template:Cite webTemplate:Cbignore</ref> was one of the first systems capable of continuous speech recognition. Subsequent systems like Hearsay II, Dragon, Harpy,<ref>Template:Cite webTemplate:Cbignore</ref> and Sphinx I/II developed many of the ideas underlying modern commercial speech recognition technology as summarized in his recent historical review of speech recognition with Xuedong Huang and James K. Baker.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Some of these ideas—most notably the "blackboard model" for coordinating multiple knowledge sources—have been adopted across the spectrum of applied artificial intelligence.<ref name="ARS" />

Technology in Service of Society

Reddy's other major research interest has been in exploring the role of "Technology in Service of Society".<ref name="ARS" /> One of the early efforts, Template:Interlanguage link was founded by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber in France in 1981 with a technical team consisting of Nicholas Negroponte, Alan Kay, Seymour Papert, Raj Reddy, and Terry Winograd. Reddy served as the Chief Scientist for the center. The centre had as its objective the Development of Human Resource in Third World Countries using Information Technology. Several seminal experiments in providing computerized classrooms and rural medical delivery were attempted.  In 1984, President Mitterrand decorated Reddy with the Légion d'Honneur medal.<ref name=":2">"Prof honored", Mitterrand Visit and Legion of Honor Ceremony. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, OCR corrected copy, original PPG, 28 March 1984</ref><ref name=":3">"Worlds apart". Mitterrand Legion of Honor Ceremony, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, OCR corrected copy, original PPG, 29 March 1984</ref><ref name=":4">"Fitting Honor for Reddy", Mitterrand Visit and Legion of Honor Ceremony. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Editorial, OCR corrected copy, original PPG, 29 March 1984</ref>

Universal Digital Library Project was started by Raj Reddy, Robert Thibadeau, Jaime Carbonell, Michael Shamos, and Gloriana S. Clair in the 1990s, to scan books and other media such as music, videos, paintings, and newspapers<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite webTemplate:Cbignore</ref><ref name="Code Swaraj">Template:Cite book</ref> and to provide online access to all creative works to anyone, anywhere at any time. A larger Million Book Project was started in 2001 as a collaborative effort with China (Professors Pan Yunhe, Yuting Zhuang, Gao Wen) and India (Prof N. Balakrishnan).

Marks of a student are a result of several factors such as the quality of the teachers, the education level of the parents, the ability to pay for coaching classes and the time spent on the task of learning the subject. Rural students tend to be at a serious disadvantage along each of these dimensions. Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT) was created for educating gifted rural youth in Andhra Pradesh in 2008, by Drs. Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, K. C. Reddy, and Raj Reddy, based on the premise that the current nationwide merit-based admissions, such as SAT tests, are flawed and do not provide a level playing field for gifted youth from rural areas.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Reddy proposed that a fully connected population makes it possible to think of a KG-to-PG-Online-College in every village providing personalized instruction.<ref>KG to PG Online Micro University in Every Village, Talk presented to HRD Ministry of AP, 5 July 2016</ref><ref>Disruptive Future of Education, Talk presented at the VC conference, India, 11 August 2016</ref> Assuming that all students are provided digital literacy and learning-to-learn training as part of primary education before they dropout, anyone can learn any subject at any age even if there are no qualified teachers on the subject.

AI can be used to empower the people at the bottom-of-the-pyramid, who have not benefited from the IT revolution so far.<ref>Reaching the Three Billion People at The Bottom of the Pyramid, Talk at Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 6 June 2018</ref> Reddy proposed that recent technological advances in AI will ultimately enable anyone to watch any movie, read any textbook, and talk to anyone independent of the language of the producer or consumer.<ref name=":1">Voice Computing and Reaching the 3B People at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Talk presented at Heidelberg Laureate Forum, 20 Sep 2016</ref> He also proposed that the use of Smart Sensor Watches can be used to eliminate COVID lockdowns by monitoring the sensor data to identify and isolate people with symptoms.<ref>No More Lockdowns? An Agenda to Eliminate Lockdowns the Post-Pandemic Era, World Laureates Forum, Shanghai, 29 Oct 2020</ref>

Awards and honors

He is a fellow of the AAAI,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> ACM,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Acoustical Society of America,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> IEEE<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Computer History Museum.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Reddy is a member<ref name="rr" /> of the United States National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Chinese Academy of Engineering, Indian National Science Academy, and Indian National Academy of Engineering.

He has been awarded honorary doctorates (Doctor Honoris Causa) from SV University, Universite Henri-Poincare, University of New South Wales,<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, University of Massachusetts,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> University of Warwick,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Anna University, IIIT (Prayagraj), Andhra University, IIT Kharagpur,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies, and Carnegie Mellon University.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1994 he and Edward Feigenbaum received the Turing Award, "for pioneering the design and construction of large scale artificial intelligence systems, demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of artificial intelligence technology."<ref name="AI">Template:Cite web</ref> In 1984, Reddy was awarded the French Legion of Honour by French President François Mitterrand.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" /> Reddy also received Padma Bhushan, from the President of India in 2001,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> the Okawa Prize in 2004,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> the Honda Prize in 2005,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the Vannevar Bush Award in 2006.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Contributions

Machine Intelligence and Robotics: Report of the NASA Study Group – Executive Summary,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Final Report<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Carl Sagan (chair), Raj Reddy (vice chair) and others, NASA JPL, September 1979. Foundations and Grand Challenges of Artificial Intelligence, AAAI Presidential Address, 1988.<ref name="foundations_GC_AI" />

Miscellaneous

Kai-Fu Lee's 2018 bestseller 'AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order' is dedicated "To Raj Reddy, my mentor in AI and in life"<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

External links

• Template:MathGenealogy