Marvin Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.
“Listen closely — Marvin Minsky’s arch, eclectic, charmingly offhand talk on health, overpopulation and the human mind is packed with subtlety: wit, wisdom and just an ounce of wily, is-he-joking? advice.”
Personal statement:
When I first saw this video I was immediately attracted to Minsky’s thirst for knowledge and out-of-breath enthusiasm for new ideas and new ways of thinking. So much so that I immediately went to my local library and picked up his book The Emotion Machine (which is where I got the title for this blog). In the book, Minsky critiques many of the current cognitive theories about how the mind works, and specifically focuses on the subject of intelligence. Minsky argues that emotions, contrary to popular belief, play a crucial role in certain types of intelligence. Instead of thinking of emotions as something “lesser” or “more primitive” than rational thought, Minsky says emotions are different “ways to think” about different “problem types” that exist in the world. Minsky believes that the next step in building truly intelligent machines will include incorporating this key concept into the future research of artificial intelligence.
June 21st, 2011
I also watched his video from NET and I was so amazed with her knowledge. He is truly a father of intelligence and he can prove it just the way he talks about his idea. And I super agree with that. Actually I bought one of his books. The “Computation” and I truly enjoyed reading his book. It enhances my knowledge about computer science. Thinking about what computation means and what its limitations are is also becoming increasingly important, as we model the mind more and more with computational models.
My recent post The Perfect Example
August 23rd, 2011
The video is indeed packed with wisdom. I must forward the details unto my son who is doing computer science. I also started to think about the point you made: "emotions are different “ways to think” , as it is very valid and it made me think about things out of the box.
Claire
September 7th, 2011
Great speech.
@ author
"Minsky argues that emotions, contrary to popular belief, play a crucial role in certain types of intelligence."
Martha Nussbaum also wrote an outstanding book about the role of emotions, "Upheavals of Thought. The Intelligence of Emotions".
Andrea