Marvin Minsky

Marvin Minsky and The Beginning of AI [Video Highlights]

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Marvin Minsky – often referred to as “the father of Artificial Intelligence”, died last week at the age of 88. The sad event was noted by both Singularitarians and skeptics from across the world and a Singularity Weblog fan sent me a remix of highlights from my original interview with Minsky together with footage from the classic documentary Machine Dreams. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

P.S. Check out the Official Alcor Statement Concerning Marvin Minsky 😉

 

Related Articles:

Marvin Minsky on Singularity 1 on 1: The Turing Test is a Joke!
Kurzweil Interviews Minsky: Is the Singularity Near?
NPR: Ray Kurzweil on Marvin Minsky Legacy

Kurzweil Interviews Minsky: Is the Singularity Near?

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Ray Kurzweil Marvin MinskyA classic interview where Ray Kurzweil interviews Marvin Minsky on the human brain, artificial intelligence and whether the singularity is near or not. Most interestingly, Minsky’s approach of trying to make sense of the brain reminds me very much of my upcoming interview with Danko Nikolic and his fascinating theory of Practopoiesis.

My 2 favorite quotes from this interview are this:

“Many people think that the way to understand the brain is to understand how the parts work and then how the combinations of them work and so forth. And that’s been successful in physics. But you can’t understand a computer by knowing how the transistors work. So people have it upside down – the way to understand the brain is to understand how thinking works and once you have a theory of that then you can look at that immensely complicated brain and say “Well, I think this area does this and that…” You can’t do it from the bottom up because you don’t know what to look for…”

“The fact is that a scientist is no better and possibly worse than the average person at deciding what’s good and what’s bad. […] So someone has to decide and I don’t know what the best way is but I certainly don’t think that asking scientists to tell you their ethics will help.”

 

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Marvin Minsky on AI: The Turing Test is a Joke!

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Marvin-MinskyMarvin Minsky is often called the Father of Artificial Intelligence and I have been looking for an opportunity to interview him for years. I was hoping that I will finally get my chance at the GF2045 conference in NY City. Unfortunately, Prof. Minsky had bronchitis and consequently had to speak via video. A week later, though still recovering, Marvin generously gave me a 30 min interview while attending the ISTAS13 Veilance conference in Toronto. I hope that you enjoy this brief but rare opportunity as much as I did!

During our conversation with Marvin Minsky we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: how he moved from biology and mathematics to Artificial Intelligence; his personal motivation and most proud accomplishment; the importance of science fiction – in general, and his take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – in particular; the Turing Test; the importance of theory of mind; the Human Brain Project; the technological singularity and why he thinks that progress in AI has stalled; his personal advice to young AI researchers…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is Marvin Minsky?

Marvin Minsky has made many contributions to AI, cognitive psychology, mathematics, computational linguistics, robotics, and optics. In recent years he has worked chiefly on imparting to machines the human capacity for commonsense reasoning. His conception of human intellectual structure and function is presented in two books: The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind and The Society of Mind (which is also the title of the course he teaches at MIT).

He received the BA and Ph.D. in mathematics at Harvard (1950) and Princeton (1954). In 1951 he built the SNARC, the first neural network simulator. His other inventions include mechanical arms, hands, and other robotic devices, the Confocal Scanning Microscope, the “Muse” synthesizer for musical variations (with E. Fredkin), and one of the first LOGO “turtles”. A member of the NAS, NAE, and Argentine NAS, he has received the ACM Turing Award, the MIT Killian Award, the Japan Prize, the IJCAI Research Excellence Award, the Rank Prize, and the Robert Wood Prize for Optoelectronics, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal.