Researcher and AI Pioneer Passes Away
Franklin, co-founder of the Institute for Intelligent Systems, led legendary research on artificial intelligence.
Dr. Stan Franklin was the W. Harry Feinstone Interdisciplinary Research Professor at the University of Memphis and co-director of the Institute for Intelligent Systems. A computer science innovator, he held several research interests. These included Cognitive Modeling using the IDA and LIDA Models; Control of Autonomous Agents; Cognitive Agents Architecture and Theory (CAAT); "Conscious" Software Agents; Intelligent Tutoring Systems; General Purpose Neurocomputing; Computability Theory of Neural Networks; and Categorical Topology (ancient). He was the author of Artificial Minds, (MIT Press, 1995) and the developer of IDA and its successor LIDA, both computational implementations of Global Workspace Theory. He is founder of the Cognitive Computing Research Group at the University of Memphis.
"He was a pioneer in Artificial Intelligence," said psychology professor Dr. Art Graesser, Emeritus Professor at the University of Memphis. "Stan's models tried to simulate how the human mind works, psychologically. Imagine a computer that could have consciousness."
Franklin passed away on January 23 at his East Memphis home. He was 91.