John
E. Laird 's
Homepage
John L. Tishman Professor of Engineering
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Computer Science and Engineering Division
Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science Department
College of Engineering
University of Michigan
3753 CSE Building
2260 Hayward
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2121
laird at umich.edu
(734) 647-1761
FAX: (734) 763-1260
Fast links:
· Soar
· Video: My talk on Cognitive Architecture when I received the John L. Tishman chair
· Current directions in my Soar research
· My general research interests
· Recent Publications (2003-2008)
· AI and Computer Games Research
Brief History:
I received my B.S. from the University of Michigan in 1975 and my Ph.D. in
Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1983. My thesis advisor was
Allen Newell. I was a member of research staff at
More details of my
history
Research
Activities:
My major research interest is in creating human-level artificial intelligent entities, with an emphasis on the underlying cognitive architecture. A major challenge is to create systems that can work on a broad range of problems, using a wide variety of methods, knowledge, and learning techniques. As part of my research, I study both artificial and natural intelligence. Since 1981, my work has centered on the development and use of Soar, a general cognitive architecture. Over the years, this has led to research in both AI and cognitive science. Within AI my work has included research in general problem solving, the genesis of the weak methods, the origins of subgoals, general learning mechanisms, interacting with external environments, learning by experience and by instruction, and integrating reactivity, planning, and learning, all in the service of constructing complete autonomous intelligent agents. In the past, I’ve done some work on developing human-level AI agents for interactive computer games. Within cognitive science, my early research has concentrated on detailed modeling of human behavior (reaction times and error rates) in visual attention, concept acquisition, and dual tasks. Currently I’m concentrating more on high-level cognition, although we do some low-level modeling off and on. Most recently, my students and I are extending Soar to include reinforcement learning, episodic memory, semantic memory, clustering, mental imagery, and emotion-inspired processing.
The following paper gives an overview of Soar 9, the version of Soar currently under development:
Laird, J. E. 2008. Extending the Soar Cognitive Architecture. Artificial General Intelligence Conference, Memphis, TN.
A description of my current research interests with Soar can be found here.
My most recent papers can be found here.
More details of my research interests
Professional
Activities:
I was general chair for the International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM), 2007 and the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE) June 2006. I am a Fellow of AAAI, ACM and the Cognitive Science Society.