At the lab, Minsky focused on recreating human capabilities such as perception and intelligence in machines, including by building robotic hands that could handle objects. After graduating, he attended Princeton, where he obtained his Ph.D.in mathematics four years later.
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Artificial intelligence is also essential to nearly every computer function, from web search to video games, and tasks such as filtering spam email, focusing cameras, translating documents and giving voice commands to smartphones.
In 1959, Minsky and John McCarthy, who coined the term artificial intelligence, founded the MIT Artificial Intelligence Project, which later became known as the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
He was convinced that man will one day develop machines that will compete with human intelligence.
Minsky was once described by author Isaac Asimov as one of only two people he admitted was more intelligent than him (the other being Carl Sagan). Minsky was the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences there, and continued to teach and mentor until recently, according to MIT Media Lab. “His genius was so self-evident that it defined ‘awesome.’ The Lab bathed in his reflected light”. His influential 1981 paper “Music, Mind and Meaning” illuminated the connections between music, psychology and the mind.
A victor of several top awards, including the prestigious A.M. Turing Award in computer science in 1969, Minsky was born on August 9, 1927.
He published his last book in 2006 under the title “The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind”.
Minsky is survived by his wife, Gloria Rudisch Minsky, MD, and three children: Henry, Juliana and Margaret Minsky.
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Minsky was inarguably a leader in AI research.
