Paul Robertson (born 1956) is a British-American AI researcher and computer scientist. He is the President of Dynamic Object Language Labs in Haverhill, Massachusetts, United States. Robertson is noted for exploring machine learning, the use of artificial intelligence in avoiding aviation accidents, and its use in autonomous robotics to reduce or eliminate human overhead responsibilities. He is a member of the Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA) Society, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Early life and education.
Robertson was born in Leamington Spa, United Kingdom in 1956. He was British born, but now a naturalized American citizen. He attended the University of Essex from 1974 to 1977, and earned a BA degree in Computer Science; he later attended the University of Oxford from 1997 to 2001, earning a DPhil in Computer Vision/Artificial Intelligence. His doctoral thesis was entitled, ‘A self-adaptive architecture for image understanding’.
Career.
Robertson was an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Dallas from 1981 to 1982. He then served as vice president at Computer Thought from 1982 to 1985. He was Chief Technical Officer at Artelligence, Inc. (1985–1987); Manager, PC Products at Symbolics (1987–1991); Chief Technical Officer at Teela Technology, Inc. (1991–1993); Chief Scientist at DOLL, Inc. (1993–2004); Research Scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2004–2007); Senior Scientist at Raytheon BBN Technologies (2007 – Aug 2010); Enthusiast at BICA Society (2011–2014) and President at Dynamic Object Language Labs (Nov 2010–Present).
He has worked on several Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded programs.
Research.
Robertson (along with Olivier Georgeon and David Lurie) reconciled the neuroscience theory of Enactive Inference, which was proposed by Karl J. Friston and his team, with computer science and artificial intelligence theories. The theory explains how the brain infers knowledge about the world through the subject's interactive experiences. "Sensorimotor states induce perturbations in neural activity, and the brain infers hypothetical causes in the world that may explain these perturbations". Robertson and his colleagues applied this theory to Artificial Intelligence, "wherein artificial agents receive input data derived from the environment’s state and infer internal data structures used to guide decisions."