With 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 by a stroke, was able to glimpse the future than most. He was 88.
After graduating as a mathematician, he was fascinated by the possibility of recreating the human mind in computers and dedicated to exploring the possibility of providing intelligence to machines. Along the way he 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 (along with Seymour Papert) in creating turtle the Logo program to become the first cursor and even developed the first confocal microscope.
Guest by engineer Horacio Reggini in 1992 Minsky was in Buenos Aires and was hailed as a star of science. His keen intelligence, his boundless curiosity and challenging ideas 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 received his doctorate at Princeton, but soon dazzled the problem of intelligence and the ability to recreate it on computers. In 1958, along with John Mc Carthy, he created the artificial intelligence program at MIT.
A decade earlier had built the first universal calculator, Eniac, designed at the University of Pennsylvania. 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 claim 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 s ociety of mind (Ediciones Galápago) concludes that the mind arises from smaller processes that gives the name of “agents”. According to his theory, each agent alone is dumb and not able to perform more than a simple task, but the meeting of these agents in societies allows the appearance of true intelligence.
It was a magnetic personality which 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, were highlights in the development of computing.
a quarter century ago, in an interview during his visit to Buenos Aires published the NATION, anticipating the course towards the world we are now starting to see, “said In the virtual world, this chair know that it is a chair when you finish playing, toys will be saved alone, everything will be clean and will make sense;.. will be more efficient and not waste time now, the world is like a bad hotel Some do not realize how boring may be “
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