AI Pioneers Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton Win 2024 Turing Award

Andrew G. Barto and Richard S. Sutton have won the 2024 Turing Award for their contributions to reinforcement learning.

This field enables machines to learn through trial and error using rewards, helping them adapt to changing environments.

Barto, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Sutton, professor at the University of Alberta, developed key algorithms and theories.

Their work, beginning in the 1980s, introduced a technique called temporal difference learning. They later co-authored the textbook Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction.

The Turing Award, given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), is often called the “Nobel Prize of computing”.

However, the Nobel Prize has also started recognizing AI research. Last year, Geoff Hinton and John Hopfield won the Nobel Prize in Physics for foundational AI work.