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Marvin L. Minsky

Marvin L. Minsky

Marvin Minsky is Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and Professor of and , at the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has led to both theoretical and practical advances in artificial , , RI Lecture Series neural networks, and the theory of Turing Ma- chines and recursive functions. (In 1961 he solved Emil Post's problem of "Tag", and showed that any computer 4623 Wean Hall • 4:30 - 6:30 pm can be simulated by a machine with only two registers and instruc- tions to increment, decrement and jump on zero.) He has made Tuesday, January 25, & Thursday, January 27, 2005 major contributions in the domains of symbolic graphical descrip- tion, computational geometry, knowledge representation, computa- tional semantics, machine perception, symbolic and connectionist learning. He has also been involved with many studies of advanced technologies for space exploration.

Professor Minsky was also one of the pioneers of intelligence-based mechanical robotics and telepresence. He designed and built some of the first mechanical hands with tactile sensors, visual scanners, and their software and computer interfaces. He also influenced many robotic projects outside of MIT, and designed and built the Marvin L. Minsky first LOGO "turtle." In 1951 he built the first randomly wired neural network learning machine (called SNARC, for Stochastic Neural-Analog Reinforce- ment Computer), based on the reinforcement of simulated synaptic Institute of Technology transmission coefficients. When a Junior Fellow at Harvard, he invented and built the first Confocal Scanning Microscope, an optical instrument with unprecedented resolution and image quality.

Since the early 1950s, Marvin Minsky has worked on using compu- tational to characterize psychological processes, as well as working to endow machines with intelligence. In 1959, Minsky and John McCarthy founded what became the MIT Artifi- cial Intelligence Laboratory, and his long tenure as its co-director Computers, Emotions placed his imprint upon the entire field of . His seminal 1961 paper, "Steps Towards Artificial Intelligence" surveyed and analyzed all of what had been done before, and set forth the major problems of that infant discipline. The 1963 paper, "Matter, , and Models" addressed the problem of making self- and Common Sense aware machines. In "", 1969, he and characterized the capabilities and limitations of loop-free learning and pattern recognition machines. In "A Framework for Represent- ing Knowledge" (1974) he put forth a model of knowledge repre- Our present-day robots can help us assemble automobiles in factories-yet none of them yet can make a bed, or sentation to account for many phenomena in , language clean your house or baby-sit. Programs now solve very complex equations, and vanquish the best human players , and visual perception. These representations, called of chess-yet still can't do what most children can do-such as understand a first-grade story. "frames," inherited their variable assignments from previously defined frames, and are often considered to be an early form of Why could computers work at such expert levels before we could make them do everyday things that seem to us object oriented programming. so much easier? That's because each specialized program needs only to exploit some small body of knowledge In the early 1970s, Minsky and Papert began formulating a theory that only applies to a small, special world. Commonsense thinking may seem less profound, yet it applies to called The Society of Mind which combined insights from develop- mental child psychology and their experience with research on much wider realms. Artificial Intelligence. The Society of Mind proposes that intelli- Many people are convinced that have special qualities-like feelings, goals, and -that no gence is not the product of any singular mechanism, but comes from the managed interaction of a diverse variety of resourceful machine could ever possess. However, I'll argue that these differences come not from the of our machines- agents. They argued that such diversity is necessary because differ- but from certain constraints we've imposed on them since the earliest days of programming. This lecture will ent tasks require fundamentally different mechanisms; this trans- forms psychology from a fruitless quest for a few "basic" principles suggest some ways to remove those restrictions, and make our computers much more resourceful. Once they're into a search for mechanisms that a mind could use to manage the equipped with more commonsense knowledge then, instead of blaming them for their faults, we'll be able to tell interaction of many diverse elements. them what we want. Bits and pieces of this theory emerged in papers through the 70s Prospective students are encouraged to read Professor Minsky's online draft "The Emotion Machine" and early 80s. Papert turned his energies to applying these new ideas to transforming education while Minsky continued to work (http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/) and are also encourage to obtain a copy of "The Society of Mind". primarily on the theory. In 1985, he published "The Society of Mind," a book in which 270 interconnected one-page ideas reflect the structure of the theory itself. Each page either proposes one such mechanism ‚ to account for some psychological phenomena ‚ Host: Matt Mason or addresses a problem introduced by some proposed solution of another page. Marvin Minsky will be visiting Carnegie Mellon for the week of January 23-28. Since the publication of "The Society of Mind," Minsky has contin- His office location will be Newell-Simon Hall 4223. ued to develop the theory in several directions. He is currently working on a new book, "The Emotion Machine," describing the For appointments, please contact Jean Harpley at 8-3802 or [email protected]. roles played by feelings, goals, emotions, and conscious thoughts in terms of processes that motivate and regulate the activities within our personal societies of mind.

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