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For co-founding the field of artificial intelligence, building the first artificial neural network, creating early robotics systems, and developing the “Society of Mind” theory of human and machine intelligence.
“No computer has ever been designed that is ever aware of what it's doing; but most of the time, we aren't either.” |
Marvin Minsky is Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Minsky has been a leading figure in computer science for over five decades. He is one of the deepest thinkers in the field of artificial intelligence, a domain he co-founded with John McCarthy (CHM Fellow, 1999), by establishing, in 1959, what would become the MIT AI Lab. A mathematician by training, his work has applied computational concepts to the understanding of human psychological processes. This work has been widely influential, as have his parallel efforts in endowing machines with intelligence.
Minsky pioneered intelligence-based mechanical robotics and telepresence. He designed some of the first mechanical hands with tactile sensors, visual scanners and their software and computer interfaces.
Throughout a career that has both mirrored the field’s general developments and posed some of its most difficult research questions, Minsky has left his imprint on generations of students and colleagues. His work has straddled computer science and psychology, resulting in groundbreaking works such as Matter, Mind, and Models (1963), A Framework for Representing Knowledge (1974), and The Society of Mind (1986). His latest book, “The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind,” is to be released later this year.
Minsky holds a B.A. (Harvard, 1949) and Ph.D. (Princeton, 1954), both in Mathematics. Among the dozens of honors he has received are the ACM Turing Award, the Japan Prize, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal. He also is the inventor of the widely used Confocal Scanning Microscope.