William Tunstall-Pedoe
William Tunstall-Pedoe | |
|---|---|
| Born | 29 January 1969 |
| Citizenship | British |
| Alma mater | Cambridge University |
| Awards | FREng |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Artificial Intelligence |
| Institutions | |
| Website | www |
William Tunstall-Pedoe FREng[2] (born 29 January 1969) is a British entrepreneur and computer scientist whose primary field of expertise is Artificial Intelligence. He was the founder and CEO of Evi (formerly True Knowledge),[3] a pioneering voice assistant, semantic search and question answering startup, and following the acquisition of Evi by Amazon was a key member of the team that built and launched Amazon Alexa.[4][5][1]
Tunstall-Pedoe is currently the founder and CEO of UnlikelyAI,[6] a British start-up focused on producing safe, general intelligence using neuro-symbolic methods.[7]
Early life and family
In 1969, Tunstall-Pedoe was born into a family of medical professionals in Dulwich.[1][8]
Tunstall-Pedoe is the son[which?] and nephew[which?] of identical twin cardiologists Hugh and Dan Tunstall Pedoe,[clarification needed] the grandson of the mathematician Daniel Pedoe, and the great nephew of Colditz escapee Pete Tunstall.[citation needed]
In 1982, when he was 13 years old, Tunstall-Pedoe moved to Scotland, where he wrote commercial software for a business run by the computer teacher while at the High School of Dundee.[8][1]
Tunstall-Pedoe subsequently studied[when?] computer science at Churchill College, Cambridge.[citation needed]
Career
Tunstall-Pedoe has been an angel investor and advisor to numerous startup companies,[9] including working as a fellow at Creative Destruction Lab at the Rotman School of Management and Said Business School.
In 2010 Tunstall-Pedoe's engine Evi calculated that Sunday, 11 April 1954, was the most boring day in history.[10][11]
The Da Vinci Code and anagrams
Tunstall-Pedoe created an AI anagram generated application called Anagram Genius that turned any text into relevant anagrams. Dan Brown used the software to create the anagrams that were integral to the plot of The Da Vinci Code novel and his name appears in the acknowledgements in the book. The same anagrams were used in the film The Da Vinci Code.[12][13]
AI chess
In 1993, at just 24 years of age, Tunstall-Pedoe developed "Cyber Chess", which was published by The Fourth Dimension. It was an early commercial chess-playing program where the weights were tuned with a Genetic Algorithm.[14]
References
- ^ a b c d e Shead, Sam (2016-11-17). "William Tunstall-Pedoe: The Cambridge AI guru who taught Amazon's Alexa how to talk". Business Insider.
- ^ a b "2019 Fellows William Tunstall-Pedoe". Royal Academy of Engineering.
- ^ "The Brit taking on Apple's Siri with 'Evi". Wired.
- ^ "Amazon Alexa and the Search for the One Perfect Answer". Wired.
- ^ Vlahos, James. Talk to Me - How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think. Penguin Books.
- ^ "What the 'Father of Alexa' did next". Sifted.
- ^ "Alexa co-creator gives first glimpse of Unlikely AI's tech strategy". Techcrunch.
- ^ a b "Case study: William Tunstall-Pedoe FREng". The Royal Society.
- ^ "Angel Investor William Tunstall-Pedoe". The Times.
- ^ "Computer identifies the most boring day in history". The Daily Telegraph.
- ^ "Was April 11, 1954 the Most Boring Day in History?". CBS News.
- ^ "William Tunstall-Pedoe FREng". Fortune.
- ^ "William Tunstall-Pedoe". Centre for Science and Policy.
- ^ "William Tunstall-Pedoe". CPW.