Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American

cognitive Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

concerned largely with research in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(AI). He co-founded the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

's AI laboratory and wrote extensively about AI and philosophy. Minsky received many accolades and honors, including the 1969

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the fi ...

Early life and education

Marvin Lee Minsky was born in New York City, to Henry, an eye surgeon, and Fannie (Reiser), a

Zionist Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...

activist. His family was Jewish. He attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School and the

Bronx High School of Science The Bronx High School of Science is a State school, public Specialized high schools in New York City, specialized high school in the Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science ...

. He later attended

Phillips Academy Phillips Academy (also known as PA, Phillips Academy Andover, or simply Andover) is a Private school, private, Mixed-sex education, co-educational college-preparatory school for Boarding school, boarding and Day school, day students located in ...

in Andover,

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. He then served in the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

from 1944 to 1945. He received a B.A. in mathematics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1950 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1954. His doctoral dissertation was titled "Theory of neural-analog reinforcement systems and its application to the brain-model problem." He was a Junior Fellow of the

Harvard Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intellect ...

from 1954 to 1957. Minsky was on the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

faculty from 1958 to his death. He joined the staff at

MIT Lincoln Laboratory The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and dev ...

in 1958; a year later, he and John McCarthy initiated what was, , named the

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

. He was the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences as well as professor of

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at MIT.

Contributions in computer science

Confocal measurement of 1-euro-star 3d and euro

Minsky's inventions include the first head-mounted graphical display (1963) and the

confocal microscope Confocal microscopy, most frequently confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) or laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM), is an optical imaging technique for increasing optical resolution and contrast of a micrograph by means of using a sp ...

(1957, a predecessor to today's widely used

confocal laser scanning microscope Confocal microscopy, most frequently confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) or laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM), is an optical imaging technique for increasing optical resolution and contrast (vision), contrast of a micrograph by me ...

). With

Seymour Papert Seymour Aubrey Papert (; 29 February 1928 – 31 July 2016) was a South African-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator, who spent most of his career teaching and researching at MIT. He was one of the pioneers of artif ...

, he developed the first

Logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name that it represents, as in ...

turtle Turtles are reptiles of the order (biology), order Testudines, characterized by a special turtle shell, shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Crypt ...

". In 1951, Minsky built the first randomly wired neural network learning machine, SNARC. In 1962, he worked on small

universal Turing machine In computer science, a universal Turing machine (UTM) is a Turing machine capable of computing any computable sequence, as described by Alan Turing in his seminal paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem". Co ...

s and published his well-known 7-state, 4-symbol machine. Minsky's book '' Perceptrons'' (written with Papert) attacked the work of

Frank Rosenblatt Frank Rosenblatt (July 11, 1928July 11, 1971) was an American psychologist notable in the field of artificial intelligence. He is sometimes called the father of deep learning for his pioneering work on artificial neural networks. Life and career ...

, and became the foundational work in the analysis of

artificial neural network In machine learning, a neural network (also artificial neural network or neural net, abbreviated ANN or NN) is a computational model inspired by the structure and functions of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of connected ...

s. The book is the center of a controversy in the history of AI, as some claim it greatly discouraged research on neural networks in the 1970s and contributed to the so-called " AI winter". Minsky also founded several other AI models. His paper "A framework for representing knowledge" created a new paradigm in knowledge representation. ''Perceptrons'' is now more a historical than practical book, but the theory of frames is in wide use. Minsky also wrote of the possibility that

extraterrestrial life Extraterrestrial life, or alien life (colloquially, aliens), is life that originates from another world rather than on Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been scientifically conclusively detected. Such life might range from simple forms ...

may think like humans, thus permitting communication. In the early 1970s, at the

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Minsky and Papert started developing what came to be known as the Society of Mind theory. The theory attempts to explain how what we call intelligence could be a product of the interaction of non-intelligent parts. Minsky says that the biggest source of ideas for the theory came from his work in trying to create a machine that uses a robotic arm, a videocamera, and a computer to build with children's blocks. In 1986, he published ''The Society of Mind'', a comprehensive book on the theory which, unlike most of his previously published work, was written for the general public. In 2006, Minsky published '' The Emotion Machine'', a book that critiques many popular theories of how human minds work and suggests alternative theories, often replacing simple ideas with more complex ones. Drafts of the book are available on his website. Minsky also invented a "gravity machine" that will ring a bell if the

gravitational constant The gravitational constant is an empirical physical constant involved in the calculation of gravitational effects in Sir Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation and in Albert Einstein's general relativity, theory of general relativity. It ...

changes, a theoretical possibility that is not expected to occur in the foreseeable future.

Role in popular culture

Minsky was an adviser on

Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American filmmaker and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Stanley Kubrick filmography, his films were nearly all adaptations of novels or sho ...

's movie ''2001: A Space Odyssey''; one of the movie's characters, Victor Kaminski, was named in Minsky's honor. Minsky is mentioned explicitly in Arthur C. Clarke's derivative novel of the same name, where he is portrayed as achieving a crucial breakthrough in artificial intelligence in the then-future 1980s, paving the way for HAL 9000 in the early 21st century: In " The Law of Non-Contradiction", episode 3 of the television anthology series

Fargo (Season 3) The third season of '' Fargo'', an American anthology dark comedy crime drama television series created by Noah Hawley, premiered on April 19, 2017, on the basic cable network FX. The season had ten episodes, and its initial airing concluded on ...

, at least two allusions to Minsky are made. The first is through the depiction of a "

useless machine A useless machine or useless box is a device whose only function is to turn itself off. The best-known useless machines are those inspired by Marvin Minsky's design, in which the device's sole function is to switch itself off by operating its own ...

": a device Minsky invented as a philosophical joke. The second is through the depiction of an animation of a robot called "minsky"—a character in a sci-fi novel called ''The Planet Wyh''.

Personal life

In 1952, Minsky married pediatrician Gloria Rudisch; together they had three children. Minsky was a talented improvisational pianist who published musings on the relations between music and psychology.

Opinions

Minsky was an atheist. He was a signatory to the Scientists' Open Letter on

Cryonics Cryonics (from ''kryos'', meaning "cold") is the low-temperature freezing (usually at ) and storage of human remains in the hope that resurrection may be possible in the future. Cryonics is regarded with skepticism by the mainstream scien ...

. He was a critic of the

Loebner Prize The Loebner Prize was an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awarded prizes to the computer programs considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The format of the competition was that of a standard Turing test. In each round ...

for conversational robots, and argued that a fundamental difference between

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...

s and

machine A machine is a physical system that uses power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to natural biological macromol ...

s is that while humans are machines, they are machines in which intelligence emerges from the interplay of the many unintelligent but semi-autonomous agents the brain comprises. He argued that "somewhere down the line, some computers will become more intelligent than most people", but that it was very hard to predict how fast progress would be. He cautioned that an artificial

superintelligence A superintelligence is a hypothetical intelligent agent, agent that possesses intelligence surpassing that of the brightest and most intellectual giftedness, gifted human minds. "Superintelligence" may also refer to a property of advanced problem- ...

designed to solve an innocuous mathematical problem might decide to assume control of Earth's resources to build supercomputers to help achieve its goal, but believed that such scenarios are "hard to take seriously" because he felt confident that AI would be well tested before being deployed.

Association with Jeffrey Epstein

Minsky received a $100,000 research grant from

Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Edward Epstein ( , ; January 20, 1953August 10, 2019) was an American financier and child sex offender. Born and raised in New York City, Epstein began his professional career as a teacher at the Dalton School, despite lacking a col ...

in 2002, four years before Epstein's first arrest for sex offenses; it was the first from Epstein to MIT. Minsky received no further research grants from him. Minsky organized two academic symposia on Epstein's private island Little Saint James, one in 2002 and another in 2011, after Epstein was a registered sex offender. Virginia Giuffre testified in a 2015 deposition in her defamation lawsuit against Epstein's associate

Ghislaine Maxwell Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell ( ; born 25 December 1961) is a British-French-American former socialite and convicted sex offender. She was found guilty of child sex trafficking and other offences in connection with the deceased financier and ...

that Maxwell "directed" her to have sex with Minsky, among others. There has been no allegation that sex between them took place nor a lawsuit against Minsky's estate. Minsky's widow, Gloria Rudisch, says that he could not have had sex with any of the women at Epstein's residences, as they were always together during all the visits to Epstein's residences.

Death

Minsky died of a cerebral hemorrhage in January 2016, at age 88. Minsky was a member of Alcor Life Extension Foundation's Scientific

Advisory Board An advisory board is a body that provides non-binding strategic advice to the management of a corporation, organization, or foundation. The informal nature of an advisory board gives greater flexibility in structure and management compared to the ...

. Alcor will neither confirm nor deny whether Minsky was cryonically preserved.

Bibliography (selected)

* 1967 – ''Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines'', Prentice-Hall * 1969 – ''Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry'', MIT Press * 1986 – '' The Society of Mind'' * 2006 – '' The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind''

Awards and affiliations

Minsky won the

(the greatest distinction in computer science) in 1969, the Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a nonprofit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest-achieving people in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet one ano ...

in 1982, the

Japan Prize is awarded to individuals whose original and outstanding achievements in science and technology are recognized as having advanced the frontiers of knowledge and served the cause of peace and prosperity for mankind. As of 2024, the Japan Prize h ...

in 1990, the

IJCAI Award for Research Excellence The IJCAI Award for Research Excellence is a biannual award before given at the IJCAI conference to researcher in artificial intelligence as a recognition of excellence of their career. Beginning in 2016, the conference is held annually and so is ...

for 1991, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the

Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and a center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and wikt:statesman, statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin ...

for 2001.Marvin Minsky – The Franklin Institute Awards – Laureate Database
.

. Retrieved on March 25, 2008. In 2006, he was inducted as a Fellow of the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a computer museum in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the Information Age, and explores the Digital Revolution, computing revolution and its impact ...

"for co-founding the field of artificial intelligence, creating early neural networks and robots, and developing theories of human and machine cognition." In 2011, Minsky was inducted into

IEEE Intelligent Systems ''IEEE Intelligent Systems'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the IEEE Computer Society and sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), British Computer Society (BCS), and European As ...

' AI Hall of Fame for the "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems". In 2014, Minsky won the

Dan David Prize The Dan David Prize is an international group of awards that recognize and support outstanding contributions to the study of history and other disciplines that shed light on the human past. Nine prizes of $300,000 are awarded each year to outstand ...

for "

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

, the Digital Mind". He was also awarded with the 2013 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and Communication Technologies category. Minsky was affiliated with the following organizations: *

United States National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the ...

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

* Extropy Institute's Council of Advisors * Alcor Life Extension Foundation's Scientific Advisory Board * kynamatrix Research Network's Board of Directors

Media appearances

* ''Machine Dreams'' (1988) * ''Future Fantastic'' (1996)

Notes

References

External links

Scientist on the Set: An Interview with Marvin Minsky

Consciousness Is A Big Suitcase: A talk with Marvin Minsky

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20060829135040/http://www.edge.org/video/dsl/EF02_minsky.html "The Emotion Universe": Video with Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky's thoughts on the Fermi Paradox at the Transvisions 2007 conference

: Marvin Minsky talk at the TED conference
"The Society of Mind"
on MIT OpenCourseWare
Marvin Minsky
tells his life story at Web of Stories (video)
Marvin Minsky Playlist
Appearance on WMBR's

'' radio show November 26, 2003
Oral history interview with Marvin Minsky
at

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

, Minneapolis. Minsky describes

(AI) research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Topics include: the work of John McCarthy; changes in the MIT research laboratories with the advent of Project MAC; research in the areas of

expert systems In artificial intelligence (AI), an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by Automated reasoning system, reasoning through bodies of knowl ...

, graphics, word processing, and

time-sharing In computing, time-sharing is the Concurrency (computer science), concurrent sharing of a computing resource among many tasks or users by giving each Process (computing), task or User (computing), user a small slice of CPU time, processing time. ...

; variations in the

Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

(ARPA) attitude toward AI.
Oral history interview with Terry Winograd
at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Winograd describes his work in computer science, linguistics, and artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), discussing the work of Marvin Minsky and others. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Minsky, Marvin 1927 births 2016 deaths American atheists American computer scientists 20th-century American Jews United States Navy personnel of World War II American artificial intelligence researchers American consciousness researchers and theorists Cryonically preserved people Jeffrey Epstein Ethical Culture Fieldston School alumni Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Harvard College alumni Harvard Fellows Jewish American atheists Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Phillips Academy alumni Princeton University alumni Scientists from New York City The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science laureates The Bronx High School of Science alumni Turing Award laureates Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society MIT Lincoln Laboratory people MIT Media Lab people Presidents of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 21st-century American Jews