Marvin Minsky's Vision of the Future

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

Key points:

• Minsky and John McCarthy co-founded the MIT AI Group in 1958, which became the AI Laboratory
• In 1951 Minsky and Dean Edmonds built one of the first electronic learning machines (300 tubes, 40 neurons with stochastic synapses) simulating maze-running rats
• Dartmouth Summer Research Project on AI (1956) is the founding event of the field; Minsky, McCarthy, Shannon, and Rochester were organizers
• McCarthy invented LISP (1958-1960) and time-sharing computing at MIT; time-sharing was initially rejected by IBM and other manufacturers
• Minsky and Papert developed LOGO language for children's education on Minsky's custom 2500 computer
• Herbert Gelernter's 1959 geometry theorem prover (using Pappus' proof for isosceles triangle) emerged from Dartmouth discussions

Connections: Marvin Minsky · Mit · John Mccarthy · Artificial Intelligence · History Of AI

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