Anthony G. Oettinger School of Science and Technology Intelligence

Anthony G. Oettinger was a Gordon McKay Research Professor of Applied Mathematics and Research Professor of Information Resources Policy, Emeritus at Harvard University, whose faculty he joined in 1954. He belonged to the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a emeritus member and founding chairman of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence’s Intelligence Science Board. He also served on the U.S. Director of Central Intelligence’s Advanced Technology Panel. He was an ex officio member of the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Science Board.  From 1994 to 2010, he chaired the Board of Visitors of the U.S. National Defense Intelligence College, having joined that Board in 1986. In 2009, he was awarded the National Intelligence Medallion and a commendation letter from President Barack Obama.

Dr. Oettinger, was a pioneer in the early development of computer code and artificial intelligence (AI) and wrote the first AI programs to incorporate learning. In 1951, Oettinger developed the “response learning programme” and “shopping programme” for the University of Cambridge EDSAC computer. Oettinger was considerably influenced by Alan Turing’s views on machine learning, and suggested that the shopping program, which simulated the behavior of “a small child sent on a shopping tour,” could pass a version of the Turing test.

He founded the Harvard Program on Information Resources Policy in 1972 to create useful knowledge, both competent and impartial, on controversial information matters. To this aim, the Program follows what still seems to be a unique process, with many ingredients.

In the White House, Professor Oettinger was a consultant to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1981-90), the National Security Council (1975-81), for which he received a commendation letter in 1977 from President Gerald Ford and the Office of Science and Technology (1961-73). He chaired the Massachusetts Cable Television Commission (1975-79) under Democratic Governor Michael Dukakis, having been on it from its start in 1972 under Republican Governor Francis Sargent. He founded the Computer Science and Engineering Board of the National Academy of Sciences and chaired it from 1967 to 1973. He was also on the Research Advisory Board of the Committee for Economic Development (1975-79) and a consultant to Arthur D. Little, Inc. (1956-80), as well as on the Scientific Advisory Group of the Defense Communications Agency (1979-90; now DISA, the Defense Information Systems Agency), on the Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence Panel of the Naval Research Advisory Committee (1978-82), and a member of the Information Warfare panel of the Naval Studies Board of the National Academy of Sciences (1993-1995). From 1963 to 1967 he was an adviser to NASA’s Apollo moon-landing program.

His former students follow not only academic but also business, military, legal, and other careers.