The Singularity Institute Blog

Dr. Shane Legg, a leading researcher of Artificial General Intelligence, has received the SIAI Canada Academic Prize for 2008. The $10,000 CDN prize is in recognition of his efforts to improve AI theory, and in the hope he will make further contributions in this field of study.

In his own words, this is what Shane is working on:

I’m currently enrolled at the University of Lugano in Switzerland as a PhD student in the department of Informatics. My thesis is written and submitted and I will be having my thesis defence in June. The title is “Machine Super Intelligence” in which I describe Marcus Hutter’s AIXI model and study some of its implications, extensions etc. […] After my PhD is defended and I’ve finished my finance post doc, I am currently looking to go to London to do another post doc at an institute that specialises in theoretical neuroscience and machine learning. I plan to research hierarchical generative temporal models as I think this is one of the key properties of the neocortex, and thus general intelligence.

More information about Shane and his academic contributions can be found at http://www.vetta.org/

The SIAI Canada Association seeks to promote research in AGI, and related areas, and awards prizes to individual researchers, students and practitioners making original contributions to the field. A previous prize was awarded to Marcello Herreshoff in 2006. Suggestions of candidates for future prizes may be forwarded to canada@singinst.org
More about SIAI Canada can be found at http://www.singinst.org/aboutus/siaicanada