
Interviews
Here is a growing list of the interviews that the Generation5 team conducted:
- Al Biles
John Al Biles is well-renowned on the computer/music scene for his work with GenJam, the computer jazz improviser. Mr. Biles works at the Rochester Institute of Technology as a professor and the undergraduate program coordinator.
- Tim Crane
Tim Crane is a lecturer of philosophy at the University College London (UCL). He specializes in the philosophy of the mind, and recently (1995) wrote a book called The Mechanical Mind. An long and excellent interview, well worth a read.
- Patrick Deupree - 7th November, 2000
Programmer for the excellent HalfLife mod, Opposing Forces. Patrick discusses some of the techniques used, as well as what it might take to become an game AI programmer.
- Robby Glen Garner
Robby Garner is the winner of the '98 and '99 Loebner Competition - a formalized version of the Turing Test. His creations are at the forefront of the 'conversational' programming envisioned by Alan Turing.
- Steve Grand
Steve Grand is the Director of Technology at Cyberlife, the company that made the Creatures programs. With some incredible insights of ALife.
- Steve Grand - 13th September, 2000
Steve Grand has left Cyberlife to start up his own research company, CyberLife Research. Steve is now considered by most to be a leader in Artificial Life. An incredibly interesting interview.
- Jeff Hannan - 24th April, 2001
Jeff Hannan is the man responsible for the excellent, neural network-powered AI behind Colin McRae Rally 2.0. Jeff dicusses the AI in CMR2 and the gaming AI industry.
- Teuvo Kohonen - 17th August, 2000
Kohonen neural-networks have received a lot of attention since Generation5 opened, thus who better to hear from than the pioneer himself, Teuvo Kohonen. A pioneer in self-organizing neural-networks, association and pattern recognition!
- Andre LaMothe
Andre LaMothe is CEO of Xtreme Games LLC, and has authored many books on game programming. He has degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering. He has worked on 2D/3D graphics, Artificial Intelligence, Compiler Design, Robotics Engineering, Virtual Reality, and Telecommunications.
- Steven Levy
Steven Levy is a well renowned ALife author - especially for his book, Artificial Life: Quest for New Life. Mr. Levy is currently the senior editor of Newsweek.
- Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky, considered by many to be the father of AI, has made major contributions to nearly every discipline in artificial intelligence. While he is also the founder of the MIT AI labs, he is mostly well known for his book The Society of the Mind.
- Melanie Mitchell
Author of the highly-acclaimed "An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms." A very interesting interview with tips on genetic algorithm programming and design.
- Michel Negroponte - 22nd October, 2001
Generation5 interviews the Emmy award-winning director of WISOR: The Robo-Welder on his visions of the future, WISOR and Honeybee Robotics. The interview also includes a Q&A session about WISOR and the film.
- Kent Quirk - 30th January, 2001
Designer and Chief Architect of the excellent designer-AI game, MindRover. This interview details tips and tricks for the game, as well as Quirk's ideas on gaming AI.
- Craig Reynolds
Craig Reynolds is an internationally renowned for his work with Boids, the program that first utilized flocking. With over 7 movie credits to his name (including Disney's TRON and Warner Brothers' Batman Returns). Reynolds was also "...winner of the Scientific And Engineering Award presented by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for pioneering contributions to the development of three-dimensional computer animation for motion picture production as part of the 70th Academy Awardsฎ held in 1998..."
- Roger Schank
Professor Roger Schank has contributed a lot to the study of natural language and Cognitive Science. He enlightened the field of natural language with conceptual dependency and scripts. He is the founder and director of The Institute for the Learning Sciences in Northwestern University.
- John Searle
Professor of Philosophy at Berkeley, and originator of the famous "Chinese Room" analogy. This analogy has been the most quote argument against Artificial Intelligence since its inception twenty years ago.
- Steve Smith
Steve has many accomplishments - to name a few he was the Apache program chief engineer for the TADS/PNVS systems, he founded System Dynamics International's (SDI) St. Louis Technical Center, and (most importantly for the field of AI!) in 1988 he wrote some Pascal code to implement what he called 'evolutionary problem solving' - which later became the famous e evolutionary algorithm.
- Noel Stephens - 2nd September, 2000
The AI Programmer for the much-hyped Daikatana. This interview details the AI employed in Daikatana, and a look at the future of game AI.
- Mike Ward - 27th November, 2001
Mike was behind the business side of RoboForge (see Generation5 review). He discusses the goals of RoboForge, why they used Java and tips for users.
- Steven Woodcock
Steven Woodcock has been a programmer for over 15 years, programming in many languages, over many platforms ranging from the Intel i740 to Model 2 Arcade machines to Cray supercomputers! His programming experience ranges from weapons programming, defense simulations to real-time 3D gaming, and Artificial Intelligence. Mr. Woodcock maintains a site on gaming AI that is widely considered as the best site of its kind.
All content copyright ฉ 1998-2002, Generation5
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