Artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky has passed away. Here are 7 things you should know about him

On January 24, 2016, local time in the United States, artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky passed away due to cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 88.

Marvin Minsky had many achievements in his life. The following 7 are just an introduction. I hope more people will be interested in learning more about this founder of artificial intelligence research.

The first neural network simulator

In 1951, Marvin Minsky proposed some basic theories about how thoughts emerge and are formed, and built the world's first neural network simulator, Snarc (Stochastic Neural Analog Reinforcement Calculator), which was able to traverse a maze with the help of its 40 "agents" and a reward system.

Based on Snarc, Minsky also made comprehensive use of his multidisciplinary knowledge to enable machines to have the ability to predict current behavior based on past behavior.

Agent-based computing and distributed intelligence are currently hot topics in artificial intelligence research. Although Snarc is still relatively crude and not flexible enough, it is one of the earliest attempts in artificial intelligence research.

Founded the MIT Artificial Intelligence Initiative

In 1956, Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy jointly initiated the "Dartmouth Conference", which is regarded as the starting point of artificial intelligence. The two also jointly proposed the concept of "artificial intelligence".

In 1959, the two jointly founded the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Artificial Intelligence Program, which later evolved into the world's first laboratory specializing in artificial intelligence - the MIT AI Laboratory.

Interestingly, in addition to conducting artificial intelligence research, the MIT AI Lab also helped shape a culture of computer and software design that had a profound impact on the modern computing industry. It planted the seeds for the idea that "electronic information should be freely available," an idea that later helped fuel the open source software movement.

Turing Award Winner

In 1969, Marvin Minsky, who was only 42 years old, won the highest award in computer science - the Turing Award. He was the first artificial intelligence scholar to receive this honor.

The Turing Award was established by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1966. It is also called the AM Turing Award, named after the British scientist Alan Turing, a pioneer in computer science. Turing is generally awarded to only one computer scientist each year and is known as the "Nobel Prize in the computer industry."

Published "The Society of Mind"

In 1985, Marvin Minsky published a groundbreaking book, The Society of Mind, which proposed that intelligence is not the product of any singular mechanism but comes from the managed interaction of a diverse variety of resourceful agents.

Marvin Minsky believed that humans are actually some kind of machine, and that the human brain is composed of many semi-autonomous but unintelligent "agents". He has a famous saying: "The brain happens to be a meat machine."

Consultant for 2001: A Space Odyssey

When Stanley Kubrick directed "2001: A Space Odyssey", he specifically consulted Marvin Minsky on what the artificial intelligence computer HAL 9000 in the movie should look like.

“They had a computer that was decorated with colored labels. Stanley Kubrick asked me, what do you think of this?” Marvin Minsky said in an interview with Science Discovery magazine. “I thought that this computer should actually be just a lot of little black boxes, because the computer needs wires to pass information to know what’s going on inside it.” So Kubrick removed the original decorations and designed a simple HAL 9000 computer.

[[162533]]

It is also worth mentioning that there is a scene in the movie where HAL 9000 is interviewed by the BBC and believes that he "will never make mistakes". Another scientist interviewed says that HAL will also have real emotions. This movie reflects some predictions of artificial intelligence experts at the time: machines will soon have human-level intelligence. At the same time, the movie also raised concerns that artificial intelligence might become a bad thing.

Early advocate of virtual reality

Marvin Minsky was also an early advocate of virtual reality. In the 1980s, Minsky published a paper proposing a telepresence remote control system.

Marvin Minsky envisioned that people would wear a muscle-like device covered with sensors, and every movement of the shoulder, hand, and finger would be accurately replicated on a mobile mechanical handle in another place. "It allows people to experience a certain event without actually intervening in it."

[[162534]]

Minsky believes that this remote work system could change the way industries such as manufacturing, energy and hospitals work. The full paper is here.

The mentor of the industry's superstars

Marvin Minsky has taught many computer science superstars at MIT, such as Ray Kurzweil, Google's engineering director, futurist, and president of Singularity University; Gerald Sussman, an outstanding AI researcher and professor of electrical engineering at MIT; and Patrick Winston, who took over the AI ​​lab after Professor Minsky retired.

Ray Kurzweil said of Marvin Minsky: "He has made great contributions to many fields, including artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, mathematics, computational linguistics, robotics, and optics. In recent years, he has been committed to giving machines the ability to reason with human common sense. For me, he is a very respectable mentor."