Marvin Minsky's Vision of the Future

Abstraction: 1981 New Yorker profile of Marvin Minsky and origins of AI research at MIT

Key points:

• Minsky and John McCarthy founded the MIT AI Group in 1958; it became the AI Laboratory in 1968 and remains one of the most distinguished AI research institutions
• In 1951 Minsky built SNARC, one of the earliest electronic learning machines: 300 vacuum tubes simulating 40 probabilistic neurons with motor-adjusted synaptic weights learning maze paths
• At the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on AI, Minsky discovered a computer could prove Pappus' proof of isosceles triangle base angles — a theorem humans rarely find — through "creative ignorance"
• McCarthy developed time-sharing and invented LISP at MIT; LISP became the dominant AI research language for a generation
• Minsky envisioned machines that form internal models, reason by analogy, and plan — contrasting with Skinner's behaviorism, which he rejected as lacking internal theory
• The article describes Minsky's early neural network ideas paralleling Donald Hebb's work and Frank Rosenblatt's Perceptron

Connections: Marvin Minsky · Mit · John Mccarthy · Artificial Intelligence · Neural Networks · History Of Computing

Source: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1981/12/14/a-i