With her smile devil, his wrinkled shirts, his impatience and his provocative statements, Marvin Minsky had the aura of genius who is seduced only by monumental undertakings. The legendary pioneer of artificial intelligence, who died Sunday at his home in Boston at age 88 by a stroke, was able to glimpse the future as few.
mathematician by training, shortly after graduating He was fascinated by the possibility of providing intelligence to machines. Along the way, he challenged accepted notions in both science and philosophy, helped inspire the concept of the personal computer, it is anticipated the Internet and the free software movement, he designed some of the first visual scanners and touch sensors, was involved in creating Turtle Logo program, which became the first cursor, and even developed the first confocal microscope.
In 1992, Minsky came to Buenos Aires four days invited by engineer Horacio Reggini which contributed to the spread of their ideas. Gave three lectures, rested in the Buenos Aires area, went riding, received the title of “honorary citizen” and was hailed as a star of science.
His keen intelligence, his boundless curiosity and ideas challenging, they left a deep imprint in bright disciples also would make history (as the futurist Ray Kurzweil, and the mathematician and inventor of supercomputers Danny Hillis). His theories revolutionized the notions about how the brain works and how to learn.
Minsky was born in New York in 1927 and since childhood showed inclination towards science. He studied mathematics at Harvard and received his doctorate at Princeton, but soon, long before neuroscience could study the brain with techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance, dazzled the problem of intelligence and the ability to recreate it on computers. In 1958, along with John Mc Carthy, who had been fellow doctoral program created the MIT artificial intelligence.
About a decade earlier had been constructed which can be considered the first universal calculator, Eniac designed at the University of Pennsylvania. It was more like a bedroom than a machine electronic monster. Had 18,000 vacuum tubes, 10,000 capacitors, 6,000 switches and a tangle of connecting cables, all packaged in a box 30 meters long, 3 meters high and 90 centimeters deep that weighed about 30 tons. Legend ensures that the lights dimmed Philadelphia the day began to work, but performed in 30 seconds what a person provided a mechanical calculator he went back and forth 20 hours of work.
In those days Many theorists thought that the principles necessary to increase the power of the machines already dominated and only new engineering achievements for storing huge amounts of data are needed.
Minsky, however, did not hesitate to argue that the goal of intelligent machines would only be achieved through new conceptions about the structure of the mind and the nature of thought.
In his book The Society of Mind (Ediciones Galapagos) organized in 30 chapters through which examines a different idea on each page tries to explain how it can emerge intelligence something intelligent and concludes that the mind consists of many smaller processes that gives called “agents”. According to his theory, each agent alone is dumb and not able to perform more than a simple task that requires absolutely no mind or thought. For Minsky, was the gathering of such officials in societies which allow the appearance of true intelligence.
“Marvin was one of the few whose vision and perspectives freed the computer from a glorious adding machine to begin to fulfill his destiny as one of the most powerful amplifiers of human endeavors, “said Alan Kay, one of the fathers of personal computing, Glenn Rifkin, The New York Times.
Era a magnetic personality that captivated and challenged his students. His collaboration with fellow mathematician Seymour Papert, who (influenced by the ideas of Piaget) developed the Logo programming language, and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the Media Lab at MIT, was a stellar moment in the development of computing. Owned by a wide range of interests, he had been a child musical prodigy and used to improvise baroque leaks in the electronic piano of his office.
“His genius was so clearly defined the word” amazing “,” I Negroponte said John Horgan, who wrote a profile on Minsky for Scientific American in 1993.
Visionary as his friend Isaac Asimov, nearly a quarter century, in an interview with La Nacion made during his visit to Buenos Aires, the world that today we are beginning to glimpse stepped forward: “Virtual reality is the future, because the world is stupid –dijo– In the real world, if you have a table, it is not aware of that. it’s just a bunch of atoms. The wonderful thing about virtual reality is that we provide a world where things really make sense. In the virtual world, this chair will know it’s a chair, when you finish playing, the toys will be saved alone, everything will be clean and will sense it will be more efficient and not waste time. We will live in a sort of Bujolandia. Now, the world is like a bad hotel. Some do not realize how boring it can be. “
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