The founder and CEO of Austin, Texas-based Cycorp, Inc., Douglas Lenat was an American businessman and artificial intelligence researcher who lived from September 13, 1950, until August 31, 2023.
For developing the machine learning program AM, Lenat received the biennial IJCAI Computers and Thought Award in 1976. He has contributed to the fields of knowledge representation, “cognitive economy,” blackboard systems, and what he coined in 1984 “ontological engineering” (with his Cyc program at MCC and, since 1994, at Cycorp).
He has also worked on (symbolic, not statistical) machine learning (with his AM and Eurisko programs), knowledge representation, and “cognitive economy.”
He has also contributed to various projects for the US government, military, intelligence, and scientific agencies, as well as military simulations. He published a critique of traditional random-mutation Darwinism in 1980.
Douglas Lenat net worth at death
At his death, Douglas Lenat’s net worth was estimated to be between $1 million and $4 million. Before Cyc, Lenat significantly advanced AI through the creation of AM (Automated Mathematician) and EURISKO in the 1970s. Unlike EURISKO, which served as a general-purpose learning program for multiple areas, AM concentrated on uncovering new mathematical facts.
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