Raj Reddy facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Raj Reddy
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| దబ్బాల రాజగోపాల్ రెడ్డి | |
Reddy in 1998
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Dabbala Rajagopal Reddy
13 June 1937 |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Education | University of Madras (BEng) University of New South Wales (MTech) Stanford University (PhD) |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Artificial Intelligence Robotics Human-Computer Interaction |
| Institutions | IIIT Hyderabad Carnegie Mellon University Stanford University |
| Doctoral advisor | John McCarthy |
| Doctoral students | James K. Baker Alexander Waibel James Gosling Janet M. Baker Kai-Fu Lee Xuedong Huang Roni Rosenfeld Harry Shum Hsiao-Wuen Hon |
Dabbala Rajagopal "Raj" Reddy, born on June 13, 1937, is a famous Indian-American computer scientist. He won the Turing Award, which is like the Nobel Prize for computer science. He is known as one of the first people to work on Artificial Intelligence (AI). For more than 50 years, he taught at Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University.
He also started and led the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He helped create a special university in India, the Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies. This university helps talented young people from rural areas get a good education. He was also the first chairman of the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. In 1994, he became the first person of Asian background to receive the Turing Award for his amazing work in AI.
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Early Life and Education
Raj Reddy was born into a Telugu family in Katur village. This village is in the Chittoor district of what is now Andhra Pradesh, India. His father, Sreenivasulu Reddy, owned land, and his mother, Pitchamma, took care of their home. Raj Reddy was the first person in his family to go to college.
College and Early Career
After earning a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, he went to Australia for an internship. While studying at the University of New South Wales, he started using early computers. He earned his master's degree in 1960 and then worked for IBM.
In 1963, he joined Stanford University. He earned his PhD in AI in 1966, becoming the first person to get an AI doctorate under John McCarthy. After teaching at Stanford for three years, he moved to Carnegie Mellon University. There, he worked with other AI pioneers, Allen Newell and Herb Simon.
Career Highlights
Raj Reddy is a University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He worked for IBM in Australia starting in 1960. From 1966 to 1969, he was an Assistant Professor at Stanford University. He joined Carnegie Mellon in 1969 as an associate professor. He became a full professor in 1973 and a university professor in 1984.
Leadership Roles
He was the first director of the Robotics Institute from 1979 to 1991. He also served as the Dean of the School of Computer Science from 1991 to 1999. As Dean, he helped create several important institutes. These include the Language Technologies Institute and the Human Computer Interaction Institute.
He is the chairman of the Governing Council of IIIT Hyderabad. He was also the first Chancellor (from 2008 to 2019) of the Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT).
Reddy also helped lead the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1999 to 2001. He was one of the people who started the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He was its president from 1987 to 1989.
AI Research and Discoveries
Reddy's early research in AI took place at AI labs at Stanford and later at Carnegie Mellon. His work focused on how computers can understand things like speech, language, and vision. He also worked on how robots can move and interact with the world.
Speech Recognition
Over five decades, Reddy and his team created many systems that could understand spoken language. These included systems for controlling robots with voice, recognizing large vocabularies of speech, and understanding different speakers. They also developed systems for dictating without limits on vocabulary.
Reddy and his colleagues made important contributions to how computers process natural scenes and how everyone can access information. They also worked on robots that can act on their own. Early systems like Hearsay I were among the first to recognize continuous speech. Later systems like Hearsay II and Dragon helped develop many ideas used in today's speech recognition technology. These ideas, like the "blackboard model" for combining different knowledge sources, are now used in many areas of AI.
Technology for Society
Raj Reddy has also been very interested in how "Technology can serve Society." One of his early projects was with the Centre Mondial Informatique et Ressource Humaine in France in 1981. Reddy was the Chief Scientist for this center. Its goal was to use information technology to help develop human skills in developing countries. They tried out new ways to provide computer classrooms and rural medical care. In 1984, the President of France gave Reddy the Légion d'Honneur medal.
Digital Libraries and Education
The Universal Digital Library Project was started by Raj Reddy and his colleagues in the 1990s. Their goal was to scan books, music, videos, and other media. They wanted to make all creative works available online to anyone, anywhere, at any time. A bigger project, the Million Book Project, began in 2001. This was a team effort with China and India.
Reddy also helped create the Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT) in 2008. This university was made to educate talented young people from rural areas in Andhra Pradesh. He believed that traditional tests might not fully show the abilities of gifted students from rural backgrounds.
Reddy has suggested that if everyone is connected online, it could be possible to have an "Online College" in every village. This college could offer personalized learning for everyone. He believes that if students learn digital skills early, they can learn any subject at any age, even without a teacher.
AI for Everyone
He also believes that AI can help people who have not yet benefited from the technology revolution. Reddy thinks that new AI advances will let anyone watch any movie, read any textbook, or talk to anyone, no matter the language. He also suggested that smart sensor watches could help stop lockdowns by monitoring health data. This could help identify and isolate people with symptoms.
Awards and Honors
Raj Reddy is a respected member of many important organizations. These include the AAAI, the ACM, and the IEEE. He is also a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He has received many honorary doctorates from universities around the world. In 1994, he and Edward Feigenbaum received the Turing Award. They won it for their groundbreaking work in designing large AI systems. Their work showed how important and useful AI technology could be in the real world.
In 1984, the French President gave Reddy the French Legion of Honour. He also received the Padma Bhushan from the President of India in 2001. Other awards include the Okawa Prize in 2004, the Honda Prize in 2005, and the Vannevar Bush Award in 2006.
Contributions and Legacy
Raj Reddy has written important reports and addresses. These include "Machine Intelligence and Robotics: Report of the NASA Study Group" in 1979. He also gave the "Foundations and Grand Challenges of Artificial Intelligence" address in 1988.
Influence on Others
Kai-Fu Lee's popular 2018 book, 'AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order', is dedicated to Raj Reddy. Lee calls Reddy "my mentor in AI and in life." This shows the big impact Reddy has had on other leaders in the field of AI.
See also
In Spanish: Raj Reddy para niños
