Two AI Pioneers, Two Bizarre Suicides

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday January 20, 2008 @05:04AM from the unfortunate-losses dept.

BotnetZombie writes "Wired tells the quite sad but very interesting stories of Chris McKinstry and Pushpinder Singh. Initially self-educated, both had the idea to create huge fact databases from which AI agents could feed, hoping to eventually have something that could reason at a human level or better. McKinstry leveraged the dotcom era to grow his database. Singh had the backing of MIT, where he eventually got his PhD and had been offered a position as a professor alongside his mentor, Marvin Minsky. Sadly, personal life was more troublesome for them, and the story ends in a tragic way.

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Re:One had emotional problems, the other pain by dustmite · 2008-01-20 07:41 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Troll ... way to trash someone just for being mentally ill, and making assumptions about what he 'would have' achieved that nobody can possibly know. Somehow I bet he still achieved more with his shortened life than you ever will. Since you're so knowledgable about the field, apparently, how about you try to tell us what was wrong with his *research* rather than just label him a "nutty kook" ... seriously, what did mentally ill people ever do to you to make you lash out so irrationally, or do you just get a kick out of it, like a schoolyard bully?