Jürgen Schmidhuber (born 1963 in Munich) is a computer scientist and artist known for his work on machine learning, universal Artificial Intelligence (AI), artificial neural networks, digital physics, and low-complexity art. His contributions also include generalizations of Kolmogorov complexity and the Speed Prior. He is co-director of the Swiss AI lab IDSIA .

The dynamic recurrent neural networks developed in his lab are simplified mathematical models of the biological feedback networks found in human brains. From training sequences they learn to solve numerous tasks unsolvable by previous such models. Applications range from automatic music composition to speech recognition, reinforcement learning and robotics in partially observable environments.

In 1997 Schmidhuber published a paper based on Konrad Zuse´s assumption (1967) that the history of the universe is computable. He pointed out that the simplest explanation of the universe would be a very simple Turing machine programmed to systematically execute all possible programs computing all possible histories for all types of computable physical laws. He also pointed out that there is an optimally efficient way of computing all computable universes based on Leonid Levin´s universal search algorithm (1973). In 2000 he expanded this work by combining Ray Solomonoff´s theory of inductive inference with the assumption that quickly computable universes are more likely than others. This work on digital physics also led to limit-computable generalizations of algorithmic information and the concept of Super Omegas, which are limit-computable numbers that are even more random (in a certain sense) than Gregory Chaitin´s number of wisdom Omega.

One ambitious theoretical and fanciful contribution is his 30-page preprint (2003) on the as yet unrealized Gödel machine which, we are told, would solve arbitrary computational problems in an optimal fashion inspired by Kurt Gödel's celebrated self-referential formulas (1931).

Schmidhuber's low-complexity artworks (since 1997) can be described by very short computer programs containing very few bits of information, and reflect his formal theory of beauty based on the concepts of Kolmogorov complexity and minimum description length.

Schmidhuber writes that since age 15 or so his main scientific ambition has been to build an optimal scientist, then retire. First he wants to build a scientist better than himself (he says his colleagues claim that should be easy) who will then do the remaining work. He claims he "cannot see any more efficient way of using and multiplying the little creativity he's got".

External link

• Home page