# Jürgen Schmidhuber on Reddit (u/JuergenSchmidhuber)

Part of Scientists on Reddit, researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-07. Interactive version: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/scientists-on-reddit/jurgen-schmidhuber

Jürgen Schmidhuber: AI researcher, co-inventor of the LSTM.

- Reddit account: [u/JuergenSchmidhuber](https://www.reddit.com/user/JuergenSchmidhuber/) (Personal account)
- How we know it's theirs: [The 2015 r/MachineLearning AMA, posted from this account](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/)
- Where they post, in the records we retrieved: r/MachineLearning (106)
- Known activity in the posts we found: 2015 to 2015
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Schmidhuber

## Moments

### u/JuergenSchmidhuber in r/MachineLearning, Mar 4, 2015 · Personal story

Replying to a redditor:

> Kennen sie (was halten sie von) Herrn Prof Weizenbaum? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weizenbaum

> IMO, Joseph Weizenbaum was by far the coolest of the invited speakers.
> The rest of us pulled out their slides and tried to make their point.
> When it was his turn, he sat down, noticed that the projector was
> still on, and said: switch that off, I don’t need this. Then he very
> eloquently argued against “digital physics”, saying things such as “To
> a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a man with a
> computer, everything looks like a computation.” The audience loved it.
>
> In private conversation about both computable universes and Artificial
> Intelligence he made fun of me and my “Schmidhubris” (I am an easy
> target). In many ways, I found him very impressive and admirable. (He
> did not convince me though.)

(Excerpt.)
Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/comment/cp46onq/ · 9 points as of Nov 7, 2026

### u/JuergenSchmidhuber in r/MachineLearning, Mar 5, 2015 · Explains things

Replying to a redditor:

> Do you have any interesting sources of inspiration (art, nature, other scientific fields other then obviously neuroscience) that have helped you think differently about approaches, methodology, and solutions to your work?

> I think the basic motivation (objective function) of artists and scientists and comedians
> is data compression progress, that is, the first derivative of data compression performance on the observed history.
> [I have published extensively about this](http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/creativity.html).
>
> A physicist gets intrinsic reward for creating an experiment leading to observations obeying a previously unpublished physical law that allows for better compressing the data.
>
> A composer gets intrinsic reward for creating a new but non-random, non-arbitrary melody with novel, unexpected but regular harmonies that also permit compression progress of the learning data encoder.
>
> A comedian gets intrinsic reward for inventing a novel joke with an unexpected punch line, related to the beginning of his story in an initially unexpected but quickly learnable way that also allows for better compression of the perceived data.

(Excerpt.)
Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/comment/cp51qpu/ · 15 points as of Nov 7, 2026