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Marvin Minsky, Pioneer In Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 88 (nytimes.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the rest-in-peace dept.

An anonymous reader sends word that Marvin Lee Minsky, co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, has died. The Times reports: "Marvin Minsky, who combined a scientist’s thirst for knowledge with a philosopher’s quest for truth as a pioneering explorer of artificial intelligence, work that helped inspire the creation of the personal computer and the Internet, died on Sunday night in Boston. He was 88. Well before the advent of the microprocessor and the supercomputer, Professor Minsky, a revered computer science educator at M.I.T., laid the foundation for the field of artificial intelligence by demonstrating the possibilities of imparting common-sense reasoning to computers."

1 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. My favorite Minsky story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
    "What are you doing?" asked Minsky.
    "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe," Sussman replied.
    "Why is the net wired randomly?" asked Minsky.
    "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play," Sussman said.
    Minsky then shut his eyes.
    "Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.
    "So that the room will be empty."
    At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.