Frank Rosenblatt (July 11, 1928July 11, 1971) was an American psychologist notable in the field of artificial intelligence. He is sometimes called the father of deep learning for his pioneering work on artificial neural networks.

Life and career

Rosenblatt was born into a Jewish family in New Rochelle, New York as the son of Dr. Frank and Katherine Rosenblatt.

After graduating from The Bronx High School of Science in 1946, he attended Cornell University, where he obtained his A.B. in 1950 and his Ph.D. in 1956.

For his PhD thesis he built a custom-made computer, the Electronic Profile Analyzing Computer (EPAC), to perform multidimensional analysis for psychometrics. He used it between 1951 and 1953 to analyze psychometric data collected for his PhD thesis. The data were collected from a paid, 600 item survey of more than 200 Cornell undergraduates. The total computational cost was 2.5 million arithmetic operations, necessitating the use of an IBM CPC as well. It was said that 15 minutes of data processing took just 2 seconds.

He subsequently moved to Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, New York, where he was successively a research psychologist, senior psychologist, and head of the cognitive systems section. It was there that he also conducted the early work on perceptrons, which culminated in the development and hardware construction in 1960 of the Mark I Perceptron, When a triangle was held before the perceptron's eye, it would pick up the image and convey it along a random succession of lines to the response units, where the image was registered.

He developed and extended this approach in many papers and a book called Principles of Neurodynamics: Perceptrons and the Theory of Brain Mechanisms, published by Spartan Books in 1962. He received international recognition for the Perceptron. The New York Times billed it as a revolution, with the headline "New Navy Device Learns By Doing", and The New Yorker similarly admired the technological advance. from the original Rosenblatt's book.]]

Rosenblatt proved four main theorems. The first theorem states that elementary perceptrons can solve any classification problem if there are no discrepancies in the training set (and sufficiently many independent A-elements). The fourth theorem states convergence of the learning algorithm if this realisation of an elementary perceptron can solve the problem. His work was done in collaboration with colleagues, especially H. D. Block.

Rosenblatt also studied the problem of generalization: Given a model that has learned to recognize a pattern, the model should still recognize the pattern under translation or rotation, or some other transformation. He studied both the case where the generalization is hardwired, and the case where it is learned.]]

Tobermory, a scaled up perceptron machine, was built between 1961 and 1967, with a focus on speech recognition. It occupied an entire room. It was a neural network with 4 layers, with 12,000 weights implemented by toroidal magnetic cores. By the time of its completion, simulation on digital computers had become faster than purpose-built perceptron machines.

George Nagy received a PhD in 1962 under Rosenblatt, primarily for work on Tobermory.

Principles of Neurodynamics (1962)

Rosenblatt's book Principles of Neurodynamics: Perceptrons and the Theory of Brain Mechanisms, published by Spartan Books in 1962, summarized his work on perceptrons at the time.

The book is divided into four parts. The first gives an historical review of alternative approaches to brain modeling, the physiological and psychological considerations, and the basic definitions and concepts of the perceptron approach. The second covers three-layer series-coupled perceptrons: the mathematical underpinnings, performance results in psychological experiments, and a variety of perceptron variations. The third covers multi-layer and cross-coupled perceptrons, and the fourth back-coupled perceptrons and problems for future study.

The cross-coupled perceptron machines are currently known as Hopfield networks. Rosenblatt proved some conditions under which it would settle into an equilibrium. Rosenblatt spent his last several years on this problem and showed convincingly that the initial reports of larger effects were wrong and that any memory transfer was at most very small. He also supervised some PhD students who investigated the role of DNA on memory. He built an observatory on a hilltop behind his house in Brooktondale about 6 miles east of Ithaca. The possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence fascinated him; he joined the search for extraterrestrial intelligence from his observatory.

IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world's largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity, presents annually a IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award.

See also

  • History of artificial intelligence § Perceptrons
  • AI Winter
  • Tobermory (short story)

References

  • An interview with Frank Rosenblatt, and Marshall C. Yovits of the Office of Naval Research.