
Nils Nilsson has died - villgax
https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1120713059125878784
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mindcrime
Oh man... first Joe Armstrong, now this. What a sad last few days. :-(

For anybody who isn't familiar with his life, Nils was one of the early
pioneers in Artificial Intelligence. He was probably best known for creating
the A* algorithm.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_John_Nilsson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_John_Nilsson)

R.I.P., Mr. Nillson.

~~~
DonaldFisk
Decades ago, I bought a copy of his book, Principles of Artificial
Intelligence. The A* algorithm is Dijkstra's search algorithm + heuristics. So
you estimate the cost from starting point to goal through a node by adding the
cost of getting to the node to an estimate of the cost of going from the node
to the goal (the heuristic).

I always had him down as a neat, but he said in a speech to AAAI that AI
needed scruffies as well as neats.

RIP.

~~~
giancarlostoro
I've been meaning to get a proper list of timeless programming / CS type of
books I should read. I feel like the original Erlang book is good enough even
if Erlang evolves beyond the book it's got so much from Joe that's so great
you can enjoy it years from now. I still remember a good amount of what he
said about the Actor pattern, I definitely want to buy a fresh copy of that
book to have with me. I had originally checked it out of my local library.

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jpgvm
Rough week for giants of computer science. :(

I remember learning A* when trying to make my first game, it was an awful game
but A* really changed the way I think about simple algorithms and was the main
thing I took away from that whole experience. RIP fellow engineer, you did
great things and I hope your work continues to inspire.

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estomagordo
Truthfully, I had never heard his name until now. But I have been cherishing
A* as one of my favourite algorithms ever since I first learned of it. It's
take on injecting sensible heuristics into BFS was an eye-opener for me. In
many ways, it represented what I thought algorithms would be, before I studied
them, but never encountered during my first class on the subject.

Godspeed.

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johnzim
Implementing A* recently I was shocked at how beautifully simple and elegant
it was. What a tremendous gift to bequeath. We truly stand on the shoulders of
giants. RIP Mr Nillson.

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dang
Also
[https://twitter.com/AndrewYNg/status/1120551175403786241](https://twitter.com/AndrewYNg/status/1120551175403786241),
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19731223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19731223).

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sjogress
Never knew his name, but A* reached me as one of the first algorithms I
implemented during my CS studies, and was the first one introducing me to the
concept of heuristic functions.

It is truly impressive how far his work reached, almost every developer I have
interacted with have at some point either used or implemented A*.

RIP mr. Nilsson, your legacy will live on

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noncoml
And the top reply is "Can AI predict whose next?". Sometimes I with the rest
of the internet was a bit more like HN.

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rcarmo
Dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19726411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19726411).
Makes me wonder if I’m shadowbanned, and why.

~~~
sokoloff
I can also see them. (Assuming no vote brigading,) It's fairly random which of
multiple stories for a notable news event will be "the one" that gets
traction.

Don't sweat it/don't chase fake internet points.

~~~
rcarmo
Thanks. I am always a bit miffed when I see stories trending on US time and
linger during EU timezones, I guess that's the main factor here.

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Skywing
Damn. A* was the first cool algorithm I implemented when learning to code
games many years ago. I remember feeling so cool having a tower defense game
with A* pathing.

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raleighm
I just started reading his Understanding Beliefs yesterday and love it thus
far. Recommended.

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w0mbat
The post title does not correctly spell his surname. It's "Nilsson" with one
"L" and a double "S".

~~~
dang
Ugh, I'm sorry we missed that. Fixed now. Thank you.

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brian_herman__
Can we get a black bar for this?

~~~
OrgNet
We should be able to get it... in the meantime, here you go:
[http://i.imgur.com/4pE9QbE.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/4pE9QbE.jpg)

