Marcus Hutter

Associate Professor, Australian National University

Marcus Hutter runs the 50,000 Euro Hutter Prize for Compressing Human Knowledge. He is an Associate Professor in the Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering (RSISE) at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia, and senior research in the National Information and Communication Technology of Australia (NICTA). He is also honorary lecturer at Technical University Munich.

His current research interests include reinforcement learning, algorithmic information theory and statistics, universal induction schemes, adaptive control theory, and related areas. He authored the book Universal Artificial Intelligence in which he develops a parameter-free theory of an optimal reinforcement learning agent embedded in an arbitrary unknown environment, based on a formal mathematical definition of general intelligence.

He earned a Bachelors degree in computer science in 1989, a Bachelors degree in Physics in 1990, and a Masters degree in computer science in 1992 at the Technical University in Munich, Germany. He earned a PhD in theoretical particle physics there in 1995. In 2003 he completed his Habilitation (2nd PhD) at the Technical University Munich in Optimal Sequential Decisions based on Algorithmic Probability, and has since then been an honorary official lecturer there.