Stuart J. Russell

Education and early life

Russell was born in Portsmouth, England, and attended St Paul's School, London. He studied physics at Wadham College, Oxford, and was awarded his Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class honours in 1982. He moved to the United States to complete his PhD in computer science at Stanford University in 1986 for research on inductive reasoning and analogical reasoning supervised by Michael Genesereth. His PhD was supported by a NATO studentship from the UK Science and Engineering Research Council.

Career and research

After his 1986 PhD, he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley as a professor of computer science. From 2008 to 2011 he also held an appointment as adjunct professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, where he pursued research in computational physiology and intensive-care unit monitoring. He is also an Honorary Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford. His research in the area of artificial intelligence includes contributions to machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, real-time decision making, multitarget tracking, computer vision, and inverse reinforcement learning.

In 2016, he founded the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at UC Berkeley, with co-principal investigators Pieter Abbeel, Anca Dragan, Tom Griffiths, Bart Selman, Joseph Halpern, Michael Wellman and Satinder Singh Baveja. Russell has published several hundred conference and journal articles as well as several books, including The Use of Knowledge in Analogy and Induction and Do the Right Thing: Studies in Limited Rationality (with Eric Wefald). Along with Peter Norvig, he is the author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, a textbook used by over 1,500 universities in 135 countries.{{Citation | access-date =6 July 2015 |access-date = 7 May 2014 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://archive.today/20140507163856/http://fli.webfactional.com/who |archive-date = 7 May 2014 |access-date = 1 August 2014 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140718203049/http://cser.org/about/who-we-are/ |archive-date = 18 July 2014}}

In 2017 he collaborated with the Future of Life Institute to produce a video, Slaughterbots, about swarms of drones assassinating political opponents, and presented this to a United Nations meeting about the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

In 2018 he contributed an interview to the documentary Do You Trust This Computer?.

His book, Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control, was published by Viking on 8 October 2019. His work is aligned with Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence themes. His former doctoral students include Marie desJardins, Eric Xing and Shlomo Zilberstein.

Russell gave the 2021 Reith Lectures, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, on Living with Artificial Intelligence with lectures on "The Biggest Event in Human History", "AI in warfare", "AI in the economy" and "AI: A Future for Humans".

In March 2023, Russell signed an open letter from the Future of Life Institute calling for "all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4". The letter has been signed by over 30,000 individuals, including AI researchers such as Yoshua Bengio and Gary Marcus. In a January 2025 article in Newsweek, Russell wrote "In other words, the AGI race is a race towards the edge of a cliff."

Awards and honors

Russell was co-winner, in 1995, of the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award at the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence, the premier international award in AI for researchers under 35. In 2022, he received the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence, only the second person (after Hector Levesque) to win both of IJCAI's main research awards. He is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), (2003) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2011). In 2005, he was awarded the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award. In 2012, he was appointed to the Blaise Pascal Chair in Paris, awarded to "internationally acclaimed foreign scientists in all disciplines," as well as the senior Chaire d'excellence of France's Agence Nationale de la Recherche.

Russell served as vice chair of the World Economic Forum's Council on AI and Robotics and is currently a member of its Global AI Council. Other awards he has received include the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award, the World Technology Award, the Mitchell Prize, and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Outstanding Educator Award.

In 2025 Russell was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. He was also elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2025.

References

Bibliography

• with Peter Norvig. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (4th ed.). Prentice Hall, 2020.
• Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control. Viking, 2019.

References

1. {{MathGenealogy
2. "Elected AAAI Fellows".
3. Russell, Stuart. (2021). "Living with Artificial Intelligence - BBC Radio 4". [[BBC]].
4. (2014). "Transcending Complacency on Superintelligent Machines".
5. He is a professor of computer science at the [[University of California, Berkeley]] and was from 2008 to 2011 an adjunct professor of neurological surgery at the [[University of California, San Francisco]].{{Google scholar id}}
6. Stuart Russell's {{ORCID. 0000-0001-5252-4306
7. "Stuart Russell".
8. "UC Berkeley launches Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence".
9. "International Association for Safe & Ethical AI — IASEAI".
10. "1542 Schools Worldwide That Have Adopted AIMA".
11. Russell, Stuart Jonathan. (1987). "Analogical and Inductive Reasoning". Stanford University.
12. "Stuart Russell's Resumé, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley".
13. Russell, Stuart. (2017). "Artificial intelligence: The future is superintelligent". Nature.
14. Polonski, Vyacheslav. (25 May 2018). "Here's Why AI Can't Solve Everything". The Conversation.
15. "Stuart J. Russell".
16. (12 May 2016). "Pentagon Turns to Silicon Valley for Edge in Artificial Intelligence". The New York Times.
17. (13 November 2017). "Ban on killer robots urgently needed, say scientists".
18. (29 August 2016). "UC Berkeley launches Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence".
19. {{DBLP}}
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21. "Professor Stuart Russell - The Long-Term Future of (Artificial) Intelligence".
22. (2010). "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach". Prentice Hall.
23. Sample, Ian. (13 November 2017). "Ban on killer robots urgently needed, say scientists". [[The Guardian]].
24. Anon. (14 December 2017). "Military robots are getting smaller and more capable". [[The Economist]].
25. "Meet the experts".
26. Russell, Stuart. (2019-10-08). "Human Compatible : Artificial intelligence and the question of control". Viking.
27. Murgia, Madhumita. (November 29, 2021). "AI weapons pose threat to humanity, warns top scientist". Financial Times.
28. Russell, Stuart. (December 1, 2021). "The Biggest Event in Human History". [[BBC]].
29. Russell, Stuart. (December 8, 2021). "AI in warfare". [[BBC]].
30. Russell, Stuart. (December 15, 2021). "AI in the economy". [[BBC]].
31. Russell, Stuart. (December 22, 2021). "AI: A Future for Humans". [[BBC]].
32. "An Open Letter Asks AI Researchers To Reconsider Responsibilities".
33. "Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter".
34. Russell, Stuart. (January 31, 2025). "DeepSeek, OpenAI, and the Race to Human Extinction".
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36. "ACM Fellows – ACM Award". acm.org.
37. "About AAAS".
38. "Professor Stuart J Russell – Award Winner". acm.org.
39. Anon. (2012). "Programme : " Chaires d'Excellence "".
40. (20 May 2025). "Eight Oxford Scientists Elected Fellows of the Royal Society | University of Oxford".
41. "National Academy of Engineering Elects 128 Members and 22 International Members".